


Shipwrecks

by jaegermighty



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Normal Life, Alternate Universe - Yoga, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Polyamory, Recovery, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1391050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/pseuds/jaegermighty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver and Sara: get lost, come home, learn some stuff, fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> from a prompt by shipperfey (andymcnope)

"Thea thinks we should take a class," Sara says. 

Oliver looks up from his paperwork and waits for that to make sense. It doesn't happen. "What?"

"Yeah." Sara's got her own chair in Oliver's office, a circular-shaped minimalist thing that she'd liberated from one of the conference rooms on the eighth floor. It's the ugliest thing Oliver's ever seen, and though he's never had the slightest urge to sit in it, he imagines it's just as uncomfortable as it looks. Sara doesn't care though, she sprawls sideways in it whenever she's there and smirks at anyone who dares to comment. It's like a metaphor for her entire personality. "Like, you know, pottery or swing dancing or something. A class."

"Together? You and me?"

She nods. "She thinks it'll help us or something."

Oliver tries to picture Sara sculpting pottery and fails spectacularly. "Okay."

"That's what I said." Sara sighs, letting her head fall backwards, hair spilling over the rim of her chair. "Just a heads up, she'll probably talk to you about it next."

Oliver sighs. "She means well."

"I know."

Silence falls; the comfortable kind. Oliver doesn't think he ever truly knew what 'comfortable' meant, before he had these silences with Sara. 

"I guess we could," she says, after a few minutes. Oliver looks up from his financials again to see her peering at him, her feet propped up against the window, pushing her chair back to sit on two legs. "If it'd make Thea and your mom feel a little better, I guess."

"What kind of class would we take?" he asks in amusement. "I don't even…"

Sara laughs, a little incredulously. "I don't know. Where do people even take _classes_? It sounds like something in a romance novel."

"Google it."

"Google," Sara repeats gleefully, still finding it endlessly funny. "Now that sounds like a romance novel term. Google me."

"We're living in the future," Oliver says. 

Sara shakes her head. "Apparently."

She turns to look at the ceiling, rocking her chair back and forth on its legs, boot still braced against the window. Oliver watches her for a second before going back to his paperwork. 

"I'll find something fun maybe," she says after another minute. "Something physical."

"Yeah," Oliver says. "Physical's good."

 

 

For the first year or so, they stuck together constantly. Every minute of every day was spent within arm's length of each other. They never separated, never let each other slip out of sight. It was too dangerous, too risky, too much like the boat, when they were holding hands one second and the next - they were gone, vanished, stolen away by the waves.

Oliver doesn't know what happened, exactly. Maybe it was when he got sick. Dysentery, he knows now, but at the time it was just - sick. Everything was vague, simple, on the island. Sick. Tired. Food. Water.

Anyway. They got better, after that. Maybe they thought - _if we get used to not having each other, it'll be easier if._ Thought, _we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable._ Thought, _it was a miracle we both survived this long, what are the chances, what are the odds._

It was a small island, really. A few miles across. By the end they knew every inch of it, and they could go weeks, months without seeing each other, only glimpsing the evidence of the other's presence, here and there. Like planets, orbiting each other - you could get so tired of another person, being so inside their head, so isolated with them, but you can't go back once you do that, either. You want them and you don't, you need them but you're sick to death of seeing their face.

If you live somewhere long enough, it becomes a part of you, maybe. Maybe that's why they have so much trouble, trying to be people again. They left the island, but they didn't. Maybe they are the island. Maybe home is just - just another place.

Maybe. Anyway.

 

 

Queen family dinners when Robert was alive were grand, lively things. Robert was a grand, lively person after all - he loved parties, holidays, music, life. He was the ultimate _all or nothing man_ , as Walter says, sometimes, wistfully, holding a glass of scotch. _He didn't know the meaning of halfway._

"Just like Ollie," Thea said once. Oliver's still unsure whether it was a compliment.

It's a different animal now, with Walter and Moira, Sara and Oliver, Roy and Thea, these new pairings that nobody had seen coming. Not worse, or better, exactly, just - different. They eat at the same time each night, with rotating menus that Moira and Raisa plan out at the top of each week. The dining room is different too - gone is that scuffed, oak table with the mismatched, wobbly chairs from Oliver's childhood, now in its place is this grand, dark, gothic table, huge chairs that are as tall as Thea is, standing up. They even have a chandelier now - eating dinner in there is like a scene from Downton Abbey. 

"I was thinking, like, kickboxing or something," Sara's saying, leaning her elbows on the table, "Thea suggested dancing but can you honestly picture Ollie and me _dancing_?"

"We dance," Oliver protests. "At parties."

"No, you _sway_ ," Thea says.

"Yeah, and you look like you're plotting murder whenever you do it," Roy adds. 

Moira clears her throat with that delicate look on her face she gets, whenever Roy feels brave enough to speak up at dinner. He doesn't flinch; he's getting better at not flinching, generally. Oliver's almost impressed. "Kickboxing, though? Isn't there something a little more...advanced, that you could try? I'd think you'd both be well above that."

"Kickboxing, Pilates or Zumba are pretty much our options at this point," Sara says. "That's all they offer at the Y, and I couldn't find anything else, as far as gyms and stuff go - "

"Oh my God," Thea says blithely, "picture Oliver and Sara in a Zumba class. Everyone close your eyes and just imagine it."

"I'm imagining blood," Roy says. Sara chokes on her water, covering her mouth and laughing into her napkin. "Lots of blood. Some crying."

"Isn't that the one set to music?" Walter asks, shooting an indulgent look at the girls, laughing and poking at each other's arms. "No - don't do that."

"I agree; that doesn't strike me as a good fit," Moira says, mouth twitching. "What about yoga, darling? There's an instructor who leads classes at the gym at QC; she's supposed to be very good."

"Isn't that just, like, stretching?" Sara asks, wrinkling her nose.

"Not exactly," Walter replies, laughing a little. "It's much more involved than that, I assure you. I attempted a class once - Moira, do you remember? - I barely made it through."

"Yoga can get intense," Thea offers. "My friend Mindy does it. She's all into it. There's like, a bunch of different kinds, it's like - this whole _lifestyle._ "

"That might be better," Oliver says quietly. "Than kickboxing, at least." Sara looks over and catches his eye. Her earrings sparkle a little, in the candlelight. 

"Excellent," Walter says decisively. "I'll look up her name for you, after dinner. I don't remember it off the top of my head."

"F-something," Moira muses. "Felicia, maybe?"

"Something like that," Walter says absently, and takes a bite of chicken.

 

 

The yoga instructor's name is Felicity, not Felicia. Felicity Smoak, and she turns out to be the cute blonde girl that Oliver accidentally spilled coffee on one morning, a few months back, when he'd gone down to the fourth floor breakroom to meet with his father's former EA, who now works in Accounting.

("Nope, it's fine, nope," she'd said, shaking her head and waving him back out of her personal space, which he'd invaded without noticing. He's better at that now - not much better. But better. "Seriously, it's fine! I'm wearing jeans, okay. I've had this blouse since I was nineteen. This outfit was made to get stained." She blinked. "I didn't mean, like - I meant normal stains. Not - oh my God okay, never mind, I am officially not talking anymore - "

"At least let me pay for the drycleaning," Oliver replied. 

"Drycleaning," she said, blinking, saying the word like she'd never had to pronounce it out loud before. Then she said, "no, that's okay, really," and fled his presence like he'd offended her, which - maybe he did. Oliver's not all that great at recognizing that sort of thing, anymore.)

He hadn't gotten her name, at the time. No matter - he has it now.

"You want to take my class?" she asks, emphasis on the 'you,' as in _you, Oliver Queen, of all people_ , "I mean - of course you can take my class, it's just - "

"Sara and I do," Oliver says. Then, after a beat, "Sara Lance. My - " girlfriend always seems like a strange way to put it, a too-small word to describe everything that Sara was, is, always will be, "partner."

"Right, no, I know who she is." Felicity blinks, adjusting her glasses fastidiously. "I didn't mean - just, you were on TV a lot. When you guys were rescued. Obviously I know who you are, so - wow, I'm sorry, in my head I was like, 'oh I'm totally not gonna bring that up' which I should've known would lead to me bringing it up." 

Oliver blinks at her, a little overwhelmed. "Okay."

"Sorry. I talk a lot. Um." Felicity smiles nervously. "The thing is? My class is like, really small."

"Okay," Oliver says again. 

"Like, there's only five of us." Felicity gives him a look, like he's supposed to understand what she's actually trying to say here. "They're all women."

"And that's...bad."

"Well for you, yeah." She blushes, a tiny, red tinge at the tops of her cheekbones. "I'm just saying, you know - not trying to discourage you or anything! But - it's kind of a tight-knit group, mostly receptionists and stuff, and we've been working together for awhile, and…"

The light bulb finally clicks. "The CEO's long lost stepson and his girlfriend joining in the middle is going to be a little awkward."

Felicity blows out a breath, like she's relieved he's finally on her same page. "They're kind of gossipy," she says, leaning in slightly, like she's telling him a secret. "I mean, you're still welcome to join, of course, it's your company and all - technically? I guess? - but, you know, fair warning, it'll be a little bit like moving in next door to the TMZ offices and announcing your every move through a speakerphone."

"I see." Oliver nods, considering this. "That sounds...horrible, actually, thank you for the warning."

"Glad I could help." Felicity fidgets a little - she'd chosen Sara's chair, actually, for this meeting. Oliver's not sure if it means anything, but if it does, he thinks it's probably a good sign. "If you're interested, I mean - I teach other classes. This isn't like, my only job." She blushes again. It's cute. "Not that I'm trying to get money out of you, or anything, like - I would have to charge you, since it's not my studio - if it were my studio I'd totally let you have a free class! But - "

"Ms. Smoak," Oliver interrupts.

"Felicity," she insists.

"Felicity." He pauses, rolling it around in his mouth. Felicity. "What studio do you work out of?"

"Harmony Yoga & Wellness," Felicity recites, snapping her fingers and reaching down into her tote bag, digging into the zipper and pulling out a powder blue business card. "Here's my - yeah. I run a bunch of different classes there - not that you have to take any of mine! There's four of us, total, and there's a pretty large variety of options. Whatever you two are most comfortable with - but everybody there is good. Obviously, or I wouldn't work there."

Oliver smiles before he even realizes that he's doing it, sort of taken aback and charmed and half-smitten with this entire experience already. Felicity Smoak, who talks a lot and teaches yoga. This is definitely a thing he did not expect to be in his life before this very moment. "Well," he says, "Walter recommended you, and if you recommend your studio, then it's not much of a choice, I would say."

"Walter recommended me?" Felicity asks, with a pleased little smile. "That's - um. Wow, tell him thanks."

"I will."

"And." She bites her lip. "There's - one of my classes goes three times a week at four-thirty in the morning? It's a little bit more advanced, but that one's pretty small too, so I'd be able to help you guys catch up, and it's - " she eyes him nervously, folding her hands together in her lap, an obvious tell. "It's a good group of people. My favorite group, actually, and - I'd think you'd fit in well."

There's a kindness in her voice that Oliver trusts - or wants to trust. But his instincts haven't let him down yet, so. "I'll talk to Sara, then," he says. "Four-thirty in the morning, huh?"

"Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday." Felicity shrugs, and smiles. "You seem like the early-riser type," she says. She's not wrong.

 

 

Later, after Felicity leaves, Oliver's phone buzzes. It makes this violent rattling sound on the glass top of his desk. He looks down and sees Sara's face, and closes down his email to answer it. 

She doesn't say anything at first, and he lets the silence sit, listening to her breathe. She went to see Laurel today. It probably went about as well as it ever does. 

"So," she finally says, "did you talk to the cute yoga girl?"

"There's a class at her studio," he says. "Early in the morning."

"How early?"

"Four-thirty am." He smiles at the pained noise she makes. "I'll wake you up. Make you coffee. We have coffee now, remember."

"How cute is she exactly?" Sara huffs. "Like - on a scale. I need to quantify this."

"That's a little twelfth grade for me, Sara, I'm not going to rate our new yoga teacher."

"At least tell me what kind of cute," Sara pushes. "Like - more of a regal, Angelina Jolie prettiness? Or romantic comedy girl next door kinda thing?"

"She's - " Oliver taps his fingers against his desktop, watching his assistant sneaking a game of Candy Crush through the glass walls. "She has glasses. And she babbles."

"Nice," Sara says, in satisfaction. "Angelinas are overrated, anyway."

 

 

On the island, there was no time. Sara had kept track of the days at first, notch marks on the side of a tree. Then there'd been this bad storm, and they'd had to stay inside the plane for awhile, and when it was over they both sort of forgot about it.

The boat that found them took them back to its port, where there'd been a small hospital with well-meaning nurses and doctors to give them food and clean clothes and kind, gentle smiles, and one of them had handed Sara a cell phone, and Oliver remembers looking over from his bed to see her staring at it in utter perplexment. 

"I don't know how to - " she'd said, and Oliver remembers realizing with a nasty jolt that he hadn't actually heard her speak in quite a while. They hadn't really needed to speak much, at the time. "Ollie, it's 2012."

"What?"

"August." She laughed, an even stranger sound. "My birthday was last week. Go figure."

The nurse had walked in then, talking quietly in a dialect of Chinese that neither of them recognized. From her hand gestures, though, it was clear that she'd wanted Sara to use the phone. Call your family, of course. It's been five years. Call your family.

Sara had just laughed again, looking over at Oliver and shrugging helplessly. 

"I have no fucking clue how to use this thing," she'd said. "I thought it was a computer when she handed it to me."

"2012," he'd said back.

"Yeah, fuck," Sara said.

 

 

They actually miss their first class, as Oliver literally cannot wake Sara up. He finds out later that she'd stayed up late with Thea the night before, doing - whatever it is that they do, locked up in the rec room together.

("Sorry," she says, sounding genuinely so, pressing her nose against his neck and kissing his adam's apple. "Really. I am. I'll go to bed early tomorrow."

He kisses her crown, doesn't remind her that the whole thing was her idea. Thea's. Whatever.)

The studio is small, clean, close by to QC. Felicity's at the front desk when they arrive, and waves away their apology.

"I figured you probably slept in or something," she says. "Four-thirty is four-thirty, I get it. Hi, I'm Felicity." She reaches out and offers her hand to Sara, who blinks a little in surprise, still sleep-drunk and groggy. "Sara, right? Nice to meet you."

"Oh. Yeah, uh me too. I mean, thanks." Sara shakes her head and Felicity's hand at the same time. "Sorry, I'm - "

"Four-thirty." Felicity nods. "Yeah, I know. You'll get used to it." She gestures to the desk. "Come on, let's get your paperwork filled out, before everyone else gets here."

Felicity seems a little different, than she'd been before, in Oliver's office. More professional, certainly. Oliver understands. Home turf is a powerful thing. She still chatters, but it seems less uncontrollable now, more like a conversational quirk than a nervous habit. 

"I have to warn you," she says, "this class isn't exactly conventional. Like, don't expect to get the typical yoga class experience, or anything, is what I mean. We don't really follow a lot of the 'rules,' so to speak."

"You signed us up for the rebel yoga class," Sara comments, elbowing Oliver's arm softly. "Good one, Ollie."

"We don't do it on purpose!" Felicity exclaims. "It just - sort of happens. Cuz we're all sorta friends. You'll see."

"How many people are in it?" Oliver asks. 

"Including the three of us," Felicity replies, "six. I told you it was small - didn't I?"

"You did," Oliver replies, inclining his head. Sara smiles a little, her head still ducked over the form she's filling out. He catches it out of the corner of his eye.

It does become abundantly clear, very quickly, that it's not exactly a class so much as a group of friends working out together. Oliver thinks that it would be very strange, an intrusion of a sort, for he and Sara to be there, if Felicity wasn't exactly the type of person that she is. She has a way about her. He's not sure how to describe it. 

John Diggle and his wife Lyla are the first to arrive, pulling up in a big SUV with government plates. The hi-beam headlights shine through the glass door of the studio and reflect off the mirror behind the front desk, causing Felicity to huff and shield her eyes. 

"Oh no, the fuzz are here," she says dryly, as they walk in. Both of them laugh. 

"Mornin'," the man says, slipping a familiar arm around Felicity's shoulders and squeezing a hello, "these are the new ones?"

"You can say fresh blood, we won't care," Sara says. 

"Was actually gonna go with fresh _meat_ , but whatever," he replies. He's about Oliver's height, built, holds himself like a soldier. His wife is the same way - solid-footed, square-jawed, with a kind face and clear eyes. "John Diggle."

"Sara Lance," Sara says, accepting his shake. 

"Oliver Queen," Oliver supplies.

"And I'm Lyla, is that coffee?" Lyla points behind the desk. Felicity waves her around, nodding. "Thank God."

"Late night," Diggle says, to Felicity. "Don't ask." She mimes zipping her mouth shut and he grins, shaking his head.

The three of them are obviously in tune together, chatting amicably as they hustle around the workout space, teasing each other lightly as they all set up. It seems easy enough for them to include he and Sara in it, and by the time they've all started to stretch out, Sara's lost that tight-eyed look she gets around strangers, doing leg stretches on a mat next to Lyla and laughing at Digg's jokes. 

"Okay, so like," Felicity says, pulling her sweater up over her head and revealing a lycra top, almost identical to Lyla's, "I did warn you two that this isn't conventional. And please feel free to ignore anything they say about me, because I am totally a great yoga teacher, and during all my other classes, I swear to God we meditate and chant and all that stuff. Promise."

"Chanting," Oliver says.

Lyla rolls her eyes. "Yeah, it's a whole thing. Trust me, you're better off, here with the red-eye crowd."

"We'll take your word on that," Sara says. 

The last remaining red-eye member stumbles in right at four-thirty on the dot, dumping a ratty backpack on the floor by the door and kicking her shoes off quickly, sending them flying across the room haphazardly.

"Sorry, sorry sorry," she says, stripping out of her heavy coat and scarf, "got held up at work, sorry, fuck - "

"Hey, Sin," Lyla says, laughter in her voice, "new people."

"Oh, sorry," Sin says, whirling around. She's young, short cropped hair around her face and a mouth made for smirking. "Hi. I'm Sin. You're the shipwrecks, right?"

"Sin," Felicity hisses. "Oh my God - "

Sara's laughing, though. "That's awesome, Ollie - _that's_ what we should've named our wifi network, shit."

Sin grins, hopping over to where Oliver and Sara sit, crossing one arm over the other and shaking both their hands at once like a circus clown. "Nice to meetcha."

"You're a menace," Diggle says fondly. "Go get your clothes on, jeez."

Oliver notices for the first time that she's in some sort of work uniform, khakis and a polo with a small logo on the breast pocket. She hops over to the cubbies up against the far wall and grabs a small bag, ducking into the bathroom with a salute. Felicity rolls her eyes at the room, a general statement of exasperation. 

"Always late," she says conspicuously, pitching her voice to be heard through the door. Sin hollers something back, muffled and indistinct. 

"Okay," Felicity says, clapping her hands together as Sin emerges, barefoot and in that same lycra top that seems to be a shared inside joke or something, "since Oliver and Sara are newbies, you all can do - whatever, I don't care. I'm gonna help them and you can watch. Or not. You decide, I'm not your mom."

Lyla snorts. "Thanks, teach."

"You don't need to rearrange the whole thing for us," Oliver says. "We'll keep up if we can and watch if we can't."

"Hey, I am the teacher," Felicity says, "so I'll rearrange if I want. They're impossible, anyway." She waves a hand, and sure enough, Diggle and Lyla are already in some sort of matching pose, their foreheads pressed to their mats and their legs stretched out behind them. "See? Can't tell them nothing."

Sara glances over and shrugs, rolling her shoulders and settling down cross-legged on her mat. Oliver silently follows suit. "Okay."

"Okay, great," Felicity says, dragging her mat a little closer. "Sin, you in?"

"Sure." Sin shrugs, and shoots Oliver a big, cheesy smile. "Can I set up behind him?"

"No," Felicity says.

 

 

It is mostly stretching. Intense stretching. It's easy to get lost in it. Felicity helps, although he's pretty sure she thinks she's doing the opposite.

(Oliver's pretty sure this is a common occurrence, for Felicity. To help and not know it.)

"You guys are in pretty fantastic shape, huh," she says, helping Sara roll up her mat. "Like - of course you are, obviously you would be. Not that - that wasn't a comment about the deserted island. I was just saying, you're both really, um, fit, of course you would do well, physically, uh - "

"I always poke her when she does that," Sin calls from across the room. Lyla, gulping from a water bottle next to her, reaches out and smacks her without looking. 

"You're so cute," Sara says, shaking her head with a laugh. "Relax. We both know what happened, we're not gonna have a breakdown if you mention it."

"Still, I'm sorry," Felicity says, rising to her feet and looking somewhat mortified. "I swear I'm not always like this."

"Too bad." Sara grins, and Felicity's eyes widen comically. 

"I like them," Diggle announces. Sara's grin widens. 

 

 

In the car, Sara says, "I liked it."

Oliver flips on the turn signal and stops completely at the red light before turning right. He doesn't need to; it's still early and the intersection is empty.

"Did you like it?"

If he looks over, he'll probably see her making that face, like she's surprised at herself. "Yeah, I liked it."

"Really?" Sara reaches out and takes his hand, resting on the gear shift. "Okay. We'll keep going then."

Oliver squeezes. "Okay."


	2. Chapter 2

Oliver and Sara have seen a dozen different therapists, between them, probably. Their current one came recommended through Dinah, who swore up and down that she was the best in the city. Her name is Dr. Meridian and she creeps the fuck out of both of them. 

Sara skipped out on today's session, muttering something about being tired, as if Oliver doesn't know that she's headed straight for Verdant to help Roy and Thea with their obsessive monthly inventory counting. That she's willing to count beer bottles for five hours straight sort of speaks to how much Sara truly hates therapy with Dr. Meridian. 

"Yoga, hmm? Sounds like fun."

Oliver shrugs. He thinks it might be her voice. Or the way she phrases things sometimes, it's so weird.

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Yeah." She nods and doesn't reply, obviously waiting for him to elaborate. "It was nice. The people seem nice."

"Well, from you, that's practically a ringing endorsement." She tilts her head slightly. Oliver tries not to fidget visibly, feeling, as always, like a bug under her microscope. "You said it was Thea's idea? Did you want to do it, or are you just going along to make her happy?"

Oliver truly does not have an actual answer to that. "I - what does that matter?"

"Maybe it doesn't." She shrugs, a delicate affectation. "Is it a difficult question for you to answer?"

"I don't know. I didn't think about it that much."

Meridian taps one fingernail against her chin, another affectation, he's fairly sure. Everything about her is affected. Maybe that's why it's so creepy. "Oliver, may I ask you a question?"

"Why not," Oliver says dryly.

"When was the last time you did something because you wanted to? Not because someone asked you to do it."

Oliver remembers, without meaning to, burying his father's body on the beach. It was before he'd found Sara, before he knew he wasn't alone. It took him all day, and by the end he was so exhausted he could barely move. He doesn't say anything.

"Think about it," Meridian says kindly. "We don't have to talk about it right now."

 

 

Felicity was right; they do get used to the early hour. By their third class, Oliver doesn't even have to bribe Sara out of bed. By the fourth, she's even getting up before he does.

It's hard not to like it. It's physically challenging, especially with Digg and Lyla there to egg them on, as competitive as they are, always showing off and shooting smug looks at the room.

("They're spies, they can't help it," Sin says.

"We are not spies," Lyla says, "we are employed by a small division of the U.S. government, the details of which are highly classified."

"Yeah, spies," Felicity says, and shrugs like it's obvious.)

By the fourth or fifth, maybe sixth, Oliver loses track, Felicity stops separating them from the group, and starts leading them through the same sequences as everyone else. They can't always keep up, but most of the time they can. It feels good. 

"So, yoga," Tommy says, on one of his afternoon visits. He's started doing that again, now that he and Laurel are married, like it's some kind of pass or something. It's okay for them to be friends, now that he's got her locked down.

(That was unfair. Oliver feels a little bad, for thinking that.)

"Yoga," Oliver agrees.

"I'd tease you about it but I think you'd probably just make that face at me, you know, like, your robot face," Tommy says. Oliver looks up at him. "Yup, that one. There you go."

"I don't have a robot face," Oliver says.

"You so have a robot face, buddy," Tommy replies, clapping him on the shoulder. "It's okay. I accept your flaws; that's the magic of friendship."

Five years ago, Oliver would probably have something to say to that. Now, though, he's got nothing.

"I think it's good," Tommy says, making himself a cup of coffee from the Keurig that Walter and Moira gave him as an office-warming gift, "it's like, healthy or some shit."

"Tommy Merlyn, praising the healthy lifestyle. Times have changed."

"Yeah, we're old now, dude," Tommy says. "Bummer."

Oliver shrugs. He's sort of okay with being old. He feels like it suits him now.

"Maybe Laurel and I could give it a shot," Tommy muses. "She was talking about joining a gym or something."

"Yeah, you could try it; we got a coupon for a free class when we signed up," Oliver says. Tommy nods vaguely.

(He's not going to do it; the very idea is absurd. This is what their friendship is now, though - making promises neither of them intend to keep.)

"The yoga pants alone would be worth it," Tommy says. Oliver toasts him with his coffee mug.

 

 

Oliver falls asleep on the couch that night, halfway through an episode of Adventure Time that Thea insisted he watch. He wakes up when she tries to put a blanket over him, reaching out and grabbing her wrist on instinct.

"Ow," she says. He lets go and rips his hand back. 

"Sorry."

"No, it's fine - don't, quit it, don't do that," she says soothingly, and plops back down next to him. He lifts his arm for her and she snuggles in, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. "Forgot the sleeping rules."

Oliver's never particularly thought of them as 'rules,' but he supposes that's what they are. "Sorry."

Thea shrugs. "Yoga tired you out, huh."

"I guess."

"So you like it, huh?"

Oliver shrugs. "Yeah."

Thea sighs a little. He knows she's disappointed in him; she always does that little sigh when they talk, just them. Like she's expecting something else than what he gives her - he'd do whatever she wanted, if he knew what it was. Or how to ask. 

"How weird would it be if we just slept here?" she mumbles after a moment, snuggling in a little closer. Oliver squeezes her shoulder lightly. 

"Raisa would scold us in the morning."

"I think," Thea muses, sounding sleepy, "between you and me, we could probably take her."

"Not sure I'd take that bet," Oliver says, but pulls the blanket back up anyway. Thea sighs again, and fists one hand in his shirt.

"Yeah, she's brutal," Thea says through a yawn. 

She drifts off quickly; she's always been like that. Oliver keeps his hand on her shoulder and his eyes closed and tries not to think about his father, holding her like this, when she was little.

 

 

The other thing yoga's done for Oliver and Sara - sex. As in, they've started having it again.

Sex wasn't really an option on the island - a few times, sure. But it was always a risk. They were terrified of pregnancy - they could barely take care of themselves as it was. Pregnancy would've been a death sentence for Sara, surely. And Sara's death sentence meant a death sentence for Oliver, too.

Then when they came home, it was - complicated. The world is complicated. There was Laurel, and Quentin and Dinah, Laurel, Tommy, Laurel. The press, always in their face, headlines that scolded them one minute and then hailed them as heroic, star crossed lovers the next. Moira and Thea and Walter, with their expectations, everyone trying too hard to be neutral. Complicated. The island was simple, but home - home is complicated.

The truth is, they weren't in love when they got on the boat - infatuated, maybe, desperate, for sure. Oliver remembers _wanting_ her, wanting her so bad his teeth hurt, thinking of her with the kind of obsession that, frankly, weirds him out now. She was so young. He was young, too, technically, but Sara - Sara was younger.

Anyway. That doesn't matter now. Now, he looks over in class sometimes and gets mesmerized by the curve of her thigh or the way her hair falls over her neck. On the mornings that she looks back, he'll send an text to his assistant to inform him he'll be in a little late, and they'll drive back home and have sex in the shower. The mansion has like four water heaters - it never gets cold. 

"Hot showers, sex, bottled water, Toaster Strudels," Sara lists one morning, lounging naked in bed with her hair drying into curls on the pillows. "Now you go."

"Things I missed on the island, or things I didn't know I was missing on the island?"

Sara shrugs. "Either."

"Sex, hot showers, obviously," Oliver replies, pausing to lean against the dresser, frowning down at his tie. "Central heating. Meat I didn't have to kill myself."

"Ooh yeah, that's a good one," Sara says, hiking one leg over the other, knees pointed towards the ceiling.

"Razors. And lotion," Oliver finishes, deciding to just scrap the tie for today. Who cares.

"Lotion?" Sara wrinkles her nose. "I've never seen you use lotion."

"No, but you use it," he says. "Nice to watch."

Sara snorts and rolls her eyes, but she grins too, and kisses him goodbye. 

 

 

There are things about Felicity that Oliver starts to notice: she dyes her hair, and her roots are dark brown. She changes her nail polish color every few days, and he's never once seen it chipped or faded. She has a dozen different yoga mats, and she matches her socks to whatever color it is that day, which is fucking adorable. She likes everybody, except for this one other instructor at the studio, whose name is Marissa and apparently is kind of mean to her. She downplays her skills and abilities and importance in others' lives, and thinks her problems aren't important, either, as evidenced by how she gets evicted from her apartment and doesn't tell anyone for two weeks.

"I cannot believe you," Lyla accuses, "where are you living?"

Felicity blows out an irritated breath. "I haven't moved out yet." They're in Half Moon, so she sounds a little strained as she talks. "There wasn't anything you could do."

"Who evicts - ungh - someone for a cat?" Sara wobbles a little bit, then corrects. "Can't you sue or something?"

"Not if it was in the rental agreement," Sin contributes, who Oliver has recently discovered is studying pre-law at SCU.

"Agreement schmagreement," Felicity mutters, pulling out of Half Moon back to resting position. Everyone follows suit, with varying levels of relief. "I mean, sure there's a no-pet rule, but everybody knows they don't care. Lucas upstairs has two huge Dobermans, and the lady next to me has a parakeet! He totally just wanted to get rid of me so he can jack up the rent, I just know it - anyway. Whatever. I'm moving on." She shakes her head and moves into Intense Side Stretch. "Sin, watch your hips, keep 'em pointed towards the front of the mat - yeah, that's it."

"Where are you living?" Digg asks. "You found a new place yet?"

"Mmmhmm," Felicity says, all dodgy and weird.

"Felicity," Oliver says.

"Technically I have a place. Technically." She grunts. "Ugh, hold on." She leads them through the bend, then back up, tossing her bangs out of her face as she straightens her spine. "I found this great place in Lamb Valley, but it's not available until October first. So _technically_ \- "

"When do you have to move out?" Lyla asks.

"Um, next week?" Felicity says sheepishly. The room erupts and she jumps back. "What! Not a big deal, I'll put my stuff in storage and stay in an extended stay hotel for a few months until this place comes up, or I find something better, who cares - "

"That is ridiculous," Sara says, "Oliver, can't you - "

"If you're about to say what I think you're about say, well - don't," Felicity says, immediately going into Low Lunge, probably because she knows Sara hates it. "Don't even."

Oliver doesn't even try to do the pose, sharing an exasperated look with Lyla and crossing his arms. "We've got temporary furnished apartments we rent out to out of town employees," he says, "rents by the week, very cheap. I'll get you one, okay?"

Felicity doesn't meet his eye, finishing the pose and straightening up again, gaze glued to the floor. Sara follows her movements exactly, a rebellious look on her face. "I don't - "

"Dude," Sin says, "you should hold out a little longer, he might offer to just buy you one."

"That is the opposite of what I want!" Felicity says, flustered.

"You are technically an employee," Oliver reminds her. "It wouldn't even be against the rules."

Felicity blows out a long breath, shifting her weight on her mat. "Okay," she says, "okay, fine, because I need it, fine. But - no funny business. Like sneak lowering the rent or something."

"I wouldn't do that," Oliver says.

"No, really, I don't even think he _can_ do that," Sara chimes in. "He works in _Applied Sciences_. And he's not even the head of it, just the assistant director."

Felicity harrumphs, stubbornly, and moves smoothly into Downward Dog. The rest of the class, abruptly remembering that they _are_ a class, scrambles to follow. "Yeah, I don't know what that means."

"I think it means you should take the apartment and shut up about it," Digg says, through a grunt.

"Fine," Felicity grumbles, to her mat.

"You're welcome," Oliver says, Sin snickering quietly beside him.

 

 

Felicity moves in over Labor Day weekend. Oliver and Sara show up without being asked, and when she opens the door, all she does is roll her eyes.

"God," she says, "I should've known."

"We're here to help," Sara says cheerfully. "Strong island muscles. Grr."

"Yeah, okay," Felicity says, long sufferingly. "Get in here." 

(She's smiling, though.)

She doesn't have a lot of stuff - their island muscles barely get used. She does have food, though, Chinese take out from the place down the street, and she makes them sit at her dining room table and eat it off of real plates.

"I've never had a dishwasher before, indulge me," she says, "use separate bowls for each thing! I want a full load."

Sara gets an impish look on her face and takes the opportunity to use six separate plates for each of her egg rolls. Felicity laughs when she sees it, walking out of her kitchen with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a broken cork opener in the other.

"Here," she says, thrusting them at Oliver, "island muscles, right? Make some magic."

"Do you want me to fix it, or open the wine?" Oliver asks, "I don't think I can do both."

"Wine," Felicity and Sara say in tandem. Oliver smirks. (It's been awhile since he's had to use his shoe to open a bottle of wine, but it's just the sort of skill you never forget.)

So, they eat, and drink wine (another thing he learns about Felicity: she likes red wine. A lot.) and she gives them the tour, affecting what's supposed to be a posh British accent as she narrates the accoutrements, but actually just comes out sounding more like Borat.

"Borat's not cool anymore," Sara tells him, giggling and leaning into his side. "Thea told me."

"Right, yes, important information," Felicity says, tipping her head at them. "Which, speaking of, how's your cultural systems update? I heard that TRL reference the other day, Sara, don't think I didn't."

"Thea makes us watch Adventure Time," Sara says. 

"And that other show," Oliver adds, "with the - politicians, or whatever. Walter and Mom watch it."

"What, that's it?" Felicity asks. "What about everything else? Oh - my God, at least tell me you've seen the last three Harry Potter movies."

"I don't think Oliver has seen any of them, honestly," Sara says. "Laurel and I were supposed to take Thea to Order of the Phoenix when it came out, but - well - "

"Well," Felicity says, steamrolling right past the inevitable, awkward ending of that sentence, "I have Netflix and at least four more bottles of wine, if you guys are interested." She pauses. "Not - I wasn't going to drink them all at once, by myself. I just pick up good bottles when I find them so sometimes I have a surplus - I swear I'm not an alcoholic."

"It'd be okay if you were, though," Oliver says. "We clearly have no room to judge."

"Right," Felicity replies, "not that I've looked up old tabloid photos of you guys or anything. Like - I maybe did that once. Maybe."

"Weak moment," Oliver supplies.

"We've got the one of Ollie peeing on the cop framed in the kitchen," Sara says, and nonchalantly knocks back the rest of her wine.

"Oh, okay then," says Felicity.

 

 

It's kind of nice, to have a friend like Felicity.

("Kind of nice for you guys to have a friend at all," says Roy, right before Thea smacks the back of his head.)

She's always around after that - stopping by Oliver's office with this set of hair rollers that she and Sara bought and trade back and forth, inviting them over for dinners where she'll inevitably have ruined something in her oven and then ordered take out from Fellini's. 

She's a quality texter, too, so organized and methodical about it. She always has perfect spelling and pronunciation, and she sends out these group texts and always identifies everyone by name so everybody knows exactly who's included in this message.

_Oliver & Sara: please advise, tonight we will be watching Marley & Me, so please bring your favorite comfort food because the end will make you very sad, unless you are a secret robot, thank you very much._

Oliver obediently stops by Ralphs after leaving the office and texts her back from the candy aisle, _i cant believe they don't sell pepsi twist anymore_

 _oh god,_ Sara sends him, followed immediately by Felicity's, _You are absolutely hopeless, just get Doritos and hurry up, Sara is already here!!!!_

Oliver smirks and picks up a bag of Lays. Just because. (The cheese ruffled kind, though - he's not a monster.)

It's not just movies, always, Felicity and Sara are pretty restless anyway, they can only handle an hour or so of television before they start talking over it and itching to move. So sometimes, instead, it's a bar somewhere, an out of the way place Felicity swears makes the best martinis in town. Or a concert that Sin tells them about, and Felicity says, "oh, that'd be kind of fun, I don't know who would go to a show like that with me though," and Sara rolls her eyes at Oliver and tells him to reschedule that meeting on Saturday morning; they've got plans now. Shopping in the West Village, setting him down at a coffee shop with a book so they can make loops, bringing bags back to sit at his feet before running off again. Texts and coffee after Sunday yoga, when Oliver doesn't have work, chain emails and youtube links Felicity sends them, "cultural update #223, please advise," cooking lessons in her kitchen, bins full of empty wine bottles, over and over, every Friday night.

She has a way about her, a certain quality to how she talks and treats them that makes them both feel so at ease, comfortable. Since coming back, Oliver thinks both he and Sara have resigned themselves to a life lived in constant tension, that rigid pressure of all the things they can't do anymore, the people they could have been, if the island hadn't happened. And maybe it's because Felicity didn't know them before, maybe it's just the relief of finally meeting someone who doesn't give a shit if Oliver doesn't talk much, or if Sara's too moody for polite company sometimes, who doesn't want to know how they got that scar or this burn mark or asks weird questions every other conversation. But maybe, also, it's just - her. Just the way she is, how she smiles and laughs and touches their skin, correcting their pose in class, poking their arms as she teases them, squeezing their hands hello.

One of the therapists they'd gone to, not long after they'd gotten back, had told them that coming home would be just as hard as the island itself had been. "You'll feel like it's a glove that doesn't fit," he'd said, Oliver doesn't remember his name, he and Sara had pretty much dismissed him and ignored anything he'd had to say. They weren't exactly in the right mindset to listen, at the time. "It's not a movie, the credits don't roll the day you come back. Living is a process, coming home is a process." Well, turns out he was right. Hindsight's twenty-twenty and all.

(Other things that are "a process": making friends, relearning how to drive in city traffic, yoga, Felicity's Netflix queue, grief, the wine list at Red Rossa, finding love, falling in it.)

 

 

Digg's started to meet him for lunch every once in awhile, whenever he's downtown for whatever reason. Classified reasons, he says. At this point, Oliver's half convinced that he and Lyla are just like, government accountants with weird senses of humor.

It's nice. He doesn't talk a whole lot, but neither does Oliver. It works.

They go to his sister-in-law's burger joint quite a lot; Carly, is her name. She has a picture of her son, Digg's nephew, tucked in the back of her order pad. She shows Oliver on his second visit, pointing out the blue soccer ribbon on his uniform with a proud smile.

"He's beautiful," Oliver says, realizing belatedly that that's the wrong word, for a boy. 

Carly doesn't seem to notice or care though. "Thank you," she says, and brings him a water refill without asking.

After she leaves, Digg gives him a look, one elbow propped up on the surface of the table. If Oliver didn't already know he was a former cop, he'd definitely peg him as one now - the unimpressed eyebrow, the faded spot on his belt where a holster probably sits, the cheap, unobtrusive dress shirt rolled up around his elbows. Sometimes Oliver feels like he's in a noir detective movie, these late afternoon lunches with Digg. "Car accident."

Oliver blinks. "What?"

"It was a car accident." Digg gestures with his eyes. "My brother."

"Oh." Oliver doesn't quite know what to say to that. "I'm sorry."

"S'alright." Digg laughs a little, a weird little thing with a wry, sad kind of humor. "Just figured I'd tell you, before you got all weird about trying to ask."

"I don't actually think I was going to," Oliver says. 

Digg laughs again. "Yeah," he says, shaking his head, "you weren't, were you?"

Oliver takes a bite of his burger, opting to stay silent. He's found that it's usually the best thing to do, when he doesn't know what to say.

"He played soccer too," Digg says. "Andy, I mean. All through college. He wasn't very good, but he loved it."

"It's a good sport," Oliver says. "Especially for kids."

"Did you play?"

"No. Sara did. Sara and Laurel both, actually." Out of nowhere, a memory strikes, sitting on the bleachers at a soccer game with Tommy, watching Laurel play against Roosevelt in the semi-finals. Sara had been benched for the last half of the season, part of her punishment for getting suspended (fistfight in the parking lot with Allison Robicheaux, Oliver remembers that very clearly too, Sara had a black eye and split lip for a week but she was a rock star at school for the whole rest of the year), and had refused to attend on principle. He'd left halfway through the game to go meet her at a party. Laurel had been furious. 

"You don't seem like the team sport type," Digg says, amusedly. "Solo stuff. Track and field, maybe."

"Drugs," Oliver says dryly. "My high school sport was drugs."

"Or that," Digg replies, with a laugh. "I wasn't gonna mention it, but - "

Oliver shrugs, and takes another bite. 

"You guys should come to a game sometime," Digg offers. "Carly does this whole thing, makes it a big deal. We grill out in the backyard afterwards. You're welcome to come."

"We wouldn't want to...impose," Oliver says, slowly.

"Sin and Felicity are regulars too, it's not like it's just a family thing." Digg smirks a little. "Every other Sunday. You should come, Oliver." He pauses, significantly. He and Lyla are good at that - significant pauses. Saying more than they're saying out loud. "We'd love to have you."

Oliver nods, taking a moment before he trusts himself to speak. "I'll talk to Sara about it."

"You should," Digg says, and drains the rest of his Pepsi.

When they leave, Carly brushes past, holding another table's order. "Don't be a stranger," she calls over her shoulder.

"She means you," Digg says, nudging him helpfully. Oliver ducks his head, tries not to take it to heart.

 

 

That night, a thunderstorm wakes him up from a nightmare. Sara's asleep next to him, breathing evenly, deeply. He doesn't wake her up.

Instead, he digs one of the yoga mats out from beneath a pile of dirty laundry and lays it out on the floor in front of the window and does the sequence Felicity does sometimes, on those mornings when they're all quiet, lost in their heads. Triangle, extended side angle, Downward Dog, Pigeon. The 'hip sequence,' she calls it. 

By the end, he's sweating and panting with exertion, falling forward on the mat and catching his breath as the storm continues to rage outside. He falls asleep there, and doesn't dream. 

Sara doesn't say anything, when she wakes him up with coffee. Just smiles, and kisses his nose. 

Black, with sugar, just how he likes. He drinks it slowly and sits in lotus on the mat, watches the sunrise and listens to Sara, humming tunelessly as she gets dressed.

It's a good morning.

 

 

Felicity goes scarce for a few days; her mother's in town for her yearly "tourism tour with bonus maternal life judging," as Felicity calls it. Apparently, she does not approve of yoga.

She sends Oliver exasperated Facebook messages throughout the entire visit, small exclamations of frustration that pop up at the bottom of his computer screen at work. He doesn't often message her back, because he can never really think of anything to say, but he doesn't think she minds. Most of them are just exclamations, anyway - _oh my God_ , and _jeeeeeez_ and then just: _!!!!!!!!!!!_

When that's over, Sara wants to take her out somewhere. Oliver suggests this Italian place that Walter's been raving about but Felicity shakes her head and says, "no, I want margaritas," and so they go to Cabo Sol. 

"Ollie and I used to come here all the time," Sara tells Felicity, and orders two large peach margaritas, extra salt. "Remember that? Friday nights, when I'd come home from school?"

Oliver winces; he really hates it when Sara talks about their early days like that, like they're fond teenage memories, like they didn't meet at restaurants like this specifically because they were cheating on Laurel, who never would've been caught dead in this part of town, back then. Felicity at least, has the grace not to comment on it. "Faintly."

"I've never been," Felicity says, looking around curiously. She's wearing a dress, the kind he's never seen her in, with a pencil skirt and clean, professional lines. Her hair's been severely straightened, too, and pulled back in a sleek ponytail. It's a far cry from her usual frizzy waves; the result is kind of disconcerting. "I don't usually eat Mexican food, though, because I love it so much, I save it to use as an indulgence - oh my _God_ , that's a huge margarita."

"Big as your head, probably," Sara says proudly, leaning back so the waiter can set them down. She reaches under the guy's arm as he reaches across with Felicity's and swipes her finger along the edge of her glass, licking the built up salt off her fingernail. 

When Oliver looks over at Felicity, she's looking at Sara, lights from the neon sign above the bar reflecting off her glasses. "What, um, flavor is this, again?"

"Peach," Sara says, around her finger. "For a peach." She grins, full force, and it sweeps across the table like a tidal wave.

"Right," Felicity says, sort of tremulously, looking over at Oliver and swallowing visibly. If they were alone, he'd say: _yeah I know, she does that, it's awful, isn't it._ As it is, all he can do is shrug. 

"Bottoms up," Sara chirps, dragging her glass closer and slurping at the edge of it like a cat. It really is that big - more of a bowl then a glass, honestly. "Time's a wastin'."

"You don't want one, Oliver?" Felicity asks, reaching up to press her dangling earrings to the side of her neck, keeping them from dipping into the glass as she bends over for a drink. 

"I don't really drink anymore," Oliver says. Nothing like withdrawal on a life raft to cure you of a dependence. "Lifetime designated driver."

"Makes him popular at parties," Sara says. 

"No it doesn't," Oliver replies dryly, and Felicity snorts.

Dinner is a gigantic plate of loaded nachos that they share between them and a carne asada burrito that Sara eats ninety percent of before demolishing the rest with a fork, brandishing heaps of it in their faces, ordering them to taste. The more of the margaritas disappear, the cuter Felicity gets, rolling her head around on her neck and bursting out with non-sequiturs that get progressively sillier as the night stretches on. 

"I think jalapenos are super underrated," she says thoughtfully. Sara snorts into laughter next to her, burying her face in the remnants of her marg.

"And that's a cue if I've ever heard one," Oliver says, grabbing the ticket. Sara waves him off, leaning back in the booth and turning her full attention on Felicity, who is frowning at the empty plate of nachos, looking sort of forlorn. 

"They do have kind of a bad rep," Sara says sympathetically, and Felicity turns with her eyebrows raised, like she's surprised. Oliver shakes his head, trying not to smile too obviously as he walks away, up to the cashier to pay. 

When he comes back, they've moved closer, leaning into a shared middle point, elbows on the table. Felicity leans back and away when she catches sight of him, and the gesture makes something go tight in Oliver's chest.

"Ladies," he says, "shall we?"

"'Shall we,'" Sara mocks, rolling her eyes as she slides out of the booth. She's loose and relaxed the way she gets when she drinks, big gestures and bigger smiles. "I swear - "

"I will make you sit in the back," Oliver threatens. Sara stops at the last second of standing and turns on her heel, probably makes some kind of face, by the way Felicity giggles.

"Is he formal all the time because he's rich or is it just an Oliver thing?" Felicity asks, accepting his hand as she slides out as well. 

"Both," Sara says, and runs her hand down the back of his shoulder. Oliver shudders, and forces himself to let go of Felicity's hand.

 

 

Sara suggests a bar, all giddy energy in the car, but Felicity's eyes are drooping, her head rolling against the window. So he drops her off at Sin's instead, who's been texting Sara all night about drunk poker night with her law school friends, apparently.

Sara's out of the car before it even stops, cursing when she trips a little over a pavement crack, phone tumbling out of her pocket and into the grass. She picks it up, brushes it off on her jeans and shrugs. 

"Don't worry about picking me up," she says, leaning over the driver's side window. "Sin said I could crash."

"Have fun," Oliver says quietly. Felicity's still dozing in the passenger seat, but she's a light sleeper. It might be weird that he knows that. 

"You too," Sara says, reaching down lazily to pick at the top button of his shirt. Oliver blinks. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"What - "

Sara cuts him off with a kiss, filthier than she'd normally take it in public, aggressive teeth and tongue. A dark street's not public, maybe. Felicity definitely isn't.

"Hmm," she says as they part, smacking her lips. It's such a thoughtless, sexy thing. Oliver grips the steering wheel to stop from reaching out and grabbing the necklace she's wearing, a dangling temptation against the frame of the car window. "Like every dream I had in high school. A night out with the girls. Hot boyfriend in a sports car."

"This is a Coupé," Oliver says dumbly, turned on and confused and sort of weirded out, all at the same time.

Sara laughs, flicking his shirt one last time before she stands up. "Whatever," she says merrily, waving goodbye. Oliver watches her go, brow furrowed. 

Felicity stirs when he turns a little sharply out of the neighborhood, mumbling something under her breath, too soft to catch. She blinks over, shifting a little under his jacket, pulled up over her shoulders. 

"You takin' me to my place?" she asks sleepily. Oliver swallows hard.

"Yeah," he says. "You can go back to sleep, if you want."

"Okay," she says, but her eyes stay open, all the way home.

 

 

When they get to her condo - her permanent one, now, the one in Lamb Valley she'd talked about - she invites him in for a nightcap, not quite meeting his eyes, twisting her hands together in her lap. He says no. He doesn't want to, but - he just...he says no.

"Thanks, for tonight," Felicity says, shrugging off his rejection. Maybe she knows it's not a real one. "I - my mother, she makes me crazy."

"Mothers tend to do that." Oliver feels cramped, claustrophobic in the cab of the car. He can hear her breathing, the rustle of her clothes as her chest rises up and down, the way her jewelry clinks together as she turns her head. Everything's too real, too sharp. 

"She doesn't really - understand me," Felicity confesses, a little shame faced. Like she feels bad for saying it out loud. "She thinks she does, but everything she thinks she knows about me isn't true anymore. You know? Like, it was true ten years ago. But it's not anymore."

Oliver thinks of Moira's sideways glances, Thea's surprised blinks. The way Tommy pauses sometimes in conversation, like he's waiting for Oliver to do something. Laurel, looking at Sara like she's a complete stranger. 

"When you're gone for a long time," he says slowly, "the people you leave behind - they get stuck on that moment right before you left. It's hard sometimes. To move past that."

Felicity has a specific look for when Oliver or Sara refer to the island, this sort of open wound of an expression. She's got it now. "Yeah," she says, "that makes sense."

"You'll be okay," Oliver says. "It just takes time. Getting to know them again."

Felicity nods, reaching over and touching his wrist. It boggles Oliver's mind, that she finds that so easy to do. Reaching out. "Making something new," she says.

Oliver nods. He doesn't know what to say. It's a familiar feeling.

"Thanks again," she says, squeezing once and then pulling away, seeming to sense that he kind of needs her to. "You guys are good friends."

"You're welcome," Oliver says, clearing his throat as she bends down, collecting her purse, folding his jacket carefully and draping it over the center console. "Sleep well."

"I'll see you on Sunday," she says, and smiles.

 

 

Oliver's fairly sure that he's in love with Felicity, or at the very least, he really, really likes her. It's a thing that should make him feel guilty. If he's even capable of that anymore. He's not too sure.

The thing is - well. The thing is that Oliver doesn't feel much of anything, or at least - it doesn't feel like those actual feelings. It's like he's watching a movie of his own life, sometimes. Like it's not actually happening to him, like he's sitting quietly in a cotton-padded room while the rest of the world knocks on the door, yelling indistinctly through the glass.

Meridian has a term for it, an intimidating phrase with "disorder" on the end that Oliver didn't pay much attention to. Sara had Googled it on the way home from that session and frowned deeply as she read the Wikipedia article. 

"Well, it sounds like you," she said. "I don't know what it means, really."

"Means I'm fucked up," Oliver supplied.

"Well, we don't exactly need to be paying her a hundred bucks an hour to figure _that_ out," Sara said, tossing her phone back in her bag in disgust. "Whatever. It's just - it's whatever. You're you, you're fine. It's how you deal with things, I get it."

"Isn't that why we're in therapy?" Oliver asked slowly. "Because the way we deal with things isn't right?"

"Who actually gives a shit," Sara snapped. "If it works, it works. I'm done talking about this." (Neither of them brought it up again.)

Anyway. His feelings for Felicity are a little different than all that. His pulse races when she touches him - puts her hands on his hips or his legs to adjust his position in class, slaps his shoulder lightly when he makes a joke, pats his back when she hugs him goodbye. When he thinks about her, he feels a little raw, present in a way that he normally doesn't. Sometimes he spaces out at work, thinking about how her hair curls at the base of her neck when she gets sweaty, or the look on her face when she talks about her mother, all trembly and vulnerable. 

He wants her - in all sorts of different ways, ways he didn't think he was still capable of. He wants to hold her hand and make love to her and tuck her in his bed, away from a world full of things that can hurt her. He wants to watch movies with her at night, and wake up in the morning and do yoga with her her on the floor in front of the window. Powerful, real wants. Good wants, he thinks.

He doesn't think it's a betrayal of Sara, exactly. He still loves Sara. That's a bone-deep thing, it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Loving Sara isn't something he does, it's something he _is_. 

He actually thinks that she'd probably get it, anyway. Her pulse races when Felicity touches her, too. He can tell.


	3. Chapter 3

Thea shows up at breakfast one morning with an engagement ring on her left hand. No announcement, nothing, just - wearing it. It's such a Thea thing to do that Oliver laughs out loud when he notices.

"Ollie," Thea says, with a death glare, but then Raisa walks in behind him and lets out a cry of excitement so loud that Moira jumps in her chair.

"Thea, oh darling," she exclaims, rushing over for a hug. Thea does that little mouth-scrunch she does when she's embarrassed, ducking her cheek into Raisa's shoulder. "I'm so happy for you, oh malyshka, I'm _so_ happy for you."

"Thanks, thank you," Thea says, a little awkwardly, clearly overwhelmed by the attention. She looks up at Oliver nervously, darting her eyes away when he tries to smile at her.

"When did this happen?" Moira asks, rising from her chair to give Thea a hug of her own, somewhat stiffer than Raisa's. "Oh - wait, your anniversary was the other night."

"Yeah, he - whatever," Thea says with a shrug. "We talked about it and everything, beforehand. It wasn't really a surprise."

"For you, maybe," Moira says dryly, but she's smiling. Oliver's fairly certain, most days anyway, that she likes Roy a lot more than she lets on. "Well, you're sure? You are rather young."

"Twenty-three isn't young," Raisa says dismissively, stacking the dirty dishes on a tray to take back to the kitchen. "My sister ran off with a tax accountant when she was seventeen - now _that_ was young."

Thea smiles at her plate. "We're sure," she says. She sounds it.

Moira looks as close to teary-eyed as she ever gets, reaching out for her coffee cup like she wants something to hang onto. "Well," she says a little shakily, "then. We have a lot of work to do, don't we?"

Raisa beams over her shoulder as she backs up through the kitchen door, giving Oliver and Thea that _see, your mom's not so bad_ look, seen by both of them a million times throughout their childhoods. Thea glances over and rolls her eyes good naturedly. 

"Great," she says wryly, "let me guess. An engagement party. Then a shower. Then a party to celebrate the shower. Then a party to celebrate the party to - "

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Moira says, "we're not that bad."

"We are that bad, Mom," Oliver says. "We really, really are that bad." Thea snorts.

"Well, it's my prerogative as your wealthy mother," Moira says, "to be as ridiculous about this as I please. And you can just deal with it, Thea."

Thea rolls her eyes again and proceeds to argue with her through the rest of breakfast, which they both seem to enjoy. 

He catches up to her later, in the foyer as she's digging through the coat closet, muttering about her car keys. She looks up when he touches her shoulder, mouth tugging up into a surprised smile when he pulls her into a hug.

"Wanted to say congratulations," he mumbles into the top of her head. She makes a small noise of contentment and drops the leather jacket she's holding to hug him back.

"Thought you might be mad or something," she says. 

"I like Roy," Oliver says honestly. 

"I know," Thea says, pulling back and smirking up at him. "It's your threats. They've gotten lazier."

Oliver doesn't deny it. "Have you told Sara?"

"I texted her, yeah." Thea shrugs. "She was at Felicity's last night; they sent me this cute video."

Oliver blinks, a little surprised. Sara's been spending a lot of nights away from the mansion lately - usually with Sin. When she hadn't come home last night, he'd just assumed that's where she was. "Oh."

"It's a little weird," Thea says, and for a paranoid second Oliver thinks she's talking about Sara and Felicity. Not that it's...weird, Sara and Felicity hanging out without him isn't weird. Whatever. "Getting married so quick, I know. It's barely been a year. It's - it's crazy, actually, but - "

"It's not weird," Oliver says. "Or crazy. He's...good to you, Speedy. You obviously love him. That's more than a lot of couples have."

"I guess." Thea bites her lip, looking suddenly very young. "And hey, if it doesn't work out, at least I'll have gotten my first marriage over with quick, right? Like Dad."

Oliver laughs a little. "Dad married a showgirl in Las Vegas and then got it annulled a week later - I don't think this is exactly comparable."

"Do you remember when we found out about that?" Thea asks, grinning. "We found that picture of them in the attic, and when we asked him about it he told us he was in a _play_ and she was his _co-star_ \- "

"I believe he said _musical_ , actually," Oliver says, laughing. "He was a horrible liar."

"Well. With most things," she says wryly.

"Yeah, well," Oliver says, conceding the point, "he'd be happy for you, too."

Thea ducks her chin into her chest and leans up for another hug, clutching at his arms with her small hands. Oliver hugs her back, blinking a little against the wave of tenderness. His little sister, Thea, _Speedy_ , grown up, getting married, moving on. It's what he'd wanted for her, and also not, all at the same time.

"I can't believe I'm moving out before you are," she mumbles into his chest. Oliver laughs.

"You always did do all the mature stuff first," he says. Thea laughs in agreement.

 

 

"He has a criminal record," Sin says, at yoga the next day. Sara laughs out loud. "What? I looked him up at work. Sara asked me to."

"I didn't _ask_ you to," Sara says, "I _suggested_ it but we were drunk, you can't hold me to that - "

"He used to snatch purses when he was a teenager," Oliver says, pulling up out of a stretch. Felicity's late this morning, some kind of car trouble, Digg and Lyla gone to help her, so it's just them this morning. It feels odd to be in the studio by themselves, even if Sin has a key. Oliver's not sure it's an _authorized_ key, but whatever. "He grew up in the Glades, his family didn't have a lot of money."

"It wasn't a judgment, I'm just, you know, sharing information," Sin says. "Passing on the intel to the big brother, thought you should know."

"Thanks," Oliver says dryly.

"Roy's a good kid," Sara says, groaning a little as she does a deep knee bend. "Kind of a smart ass. Down to earth. Doesn't take any of the Queens' bullshit."

"Hey," Oliver says.

"Well," Sara says, shrugging unapologetically. "Important quality in an in-law."

Sin chortles a little, plopping down on her mat and moving into a plank. Sin always moves in starts and stutters, making yoga poses look more like modern dance moves than anything else. It works for her, though. "So when are you guys gonna tie the knot?"

Sara chokes on a gulp of water. 

"Uh," Oliver says uneasily.

"Ohhh my God," Sin says, laughing, "wow, okay. Forget I asked."

"Don't look at us like that," Sara complains, "it's not - you did that on purpose."

"Somebody's gotta keep you on your toes," Sin says. 

"Brat," Sara says fondly.

 

 

Sara's birthday is coming up, and Thea wants to wait until afterwards to start the long parade of wedding-related events, afraid of stealing any thunder.

"No," Sara says, " _really_. Thea. It's fine."

"I insist," Thea says gleefully, with an evil spark in her eye. Sara sighs in resignation. 

It's been two years since they got back, but they hadn't really celebrated much last year. Laurel and Tommy had gotten married in July, and Sara had gotten arrested for a DUI thing a few weeks later, and everything was just...weird. It hadn't been a great summer. So it's the first birthday, technically, and of course, Moira wants to do something.

"We'll leave it up to you, Sara," Moira says kindly. "We can have a party, if you want, or...just celebrate quietly. Invite your family over for dinner, perhaps?"

Sara wrinkles her nose. "My parents want to have a thing, with just us," she says. She doesn't sound like she's exactly looking forward to it. "But, I don't know. I'm not really big on the birthday thing."

"How about something small, then," Moira proposes. "Just us, and your family, of course, if you're up for it. Your friends from yoga?"

"We could have it at Verdant," Thea pipes up, from the couch. She's paging through a wedding magazine, acting like she's not listening, but she totally is, she _always_ is. "Next week, we're not even open on Wednesday and Thursday, while that water main thing outside gets fixed. We could do it then."

Sara shakes her head, looking a little overwhelmed. "Well," she says, "sounds like a plan, I guess." She meets Oliver's eye, and he tries to look sympathetic. Considering Thea and Moira had done this exact same thing to him four months before on his birthday, however, he's not sure he pulls it off.

"Good," Moira says, leaning over to press a kiss to Sara's temple, on her way out of the living room. "It'll be fun, you'll see."

"Oh yeah, fun," Sara says, with a grimace. Thea smirks and goes back to her magazine.

Felicity, however, seems to think it's a great idea. "You deserve it," she says earnestly, which makes Sara blush. Honestly, _blush_. Oliver hasn't seen Sara blush in years. "It's okay to celebrate yourself every once in awhile. Why not? You're awesome!"

Sara looks down at her dinner plate, pursing her lips exaggeratedly. "Thanks, Coach."

"I'm serious," Felicity insists, gesturing sternly with her fork. "Everyone needs reminding, sometimes, of all the ways and hows that they're special and good. That's what birthdays are _for_ , and that's what everyone wants to do for you, Sara."

"She has a point," Oliver says.

"It's just, I don't know, weird," Sara says, "being the center of attention, I guess."

She used to want that, Oliver remembers. Always looking for ways to get people's eyes on her (and more importantly: off of Laurel). Then again, he doesn't have room to judge - he used to do the same thing.

"It's not so bad when it's just people you love though, is it?" Felicity asks. 

"I guess not," Sara says, leaning back in her chair, crossing her arms in an oddly defensive movement. "Will you be there?"

Felicity jerks her head back a little, looking taken aback. The moment stretches out with a weird sort of tension, and she glances over nervously at Oliver before she speaks. "I - am I invited?"

"Of course," Oliver says, the last word almost covered up by the thump of Sara's feet, as she readjusts jerkily in her chair.

"You love me, don't you?" Sara asks. She smirks, a second too late. "I mean - "

"Yes," Felicity says abruptly, focusing on her wine glass instead of Sara. "Yeah, I was just - teasing. Of course I'm coming."

"Good," Oliver says, in an effort to cover up the sudden hollowness in the room, a bleak sort of energy that seems out of place in Felicity's cheerful home. "It'll be fun."

Felicity nods, and Sara knocks back the rest of her wine, and the dinner table suddenly seems much larger than it has ever been before.

 

 

Things are a little weird between Oliver and Sara, in the days leading up to the party. She's always been a little hard to pin down, periodically disappearing for hours or sometimes days, without a word to anyone. It's an island habit, back from when she wasn't beholden to anyone but Oliver, who was never all that good at beholding much of anything.

So it doesn't bother him, usually, when she does that. But now it's not usual, anymore, now it does. He feels like a loose end now, and he's not even sure why. 

(It strikes him, not for the first time, that without Sara, he doesn't know what he'd do, really. Life in the real world is an endless, grey road, long days in a job he's just adequate at and a family he doesn't quite understand anymore. Sara is what brings it all into focus, and Felicity colors everything in, and without them, Oliver is - black and white lines. Nothing but a sketchy outline on a ripped out piece of notebook paper.

He doesn't want to think: what if they choose each other, or they might not want me around anymore, but he does. Maybe this is why it's different now. Probably this is why.)

The roiling discontentment leads him to Digg and Lyla's, AJ's final soccer game of the summer. Carly greets him at the door with a hug and a smile, squeezing his arm as she says, "took you long enough."

"I should've come earlier," Oliver says, surprised to find that he means it. 

Carly just shrugs and rolls her eyes a little. "Somehow, we've managed to survive without your presence," she says dryly, but she's got the same fondness to her voice that Digg and Lyla have, when they tease Oliver like that. Coming from them, it's a sign of affection, he thinks.

There's a small crowd in the backyard, with AJ front and center, holding court on an overturned plastic crate next to Digg, who's cooking burgers on a red grill. Oliver quietly inserts himself next to Lyla and Sin, who are laughing gleefully at AJ's reenactments of his game as they sit in the shade next to the deck.

"Yo," Sin greets, offering him a beer from the cooler next to her knee. Oliver waves her a no and she grins wryly. "Right, I forgot, you don't drink."

"Character flaw," Oliver says, catching the Pepsi she throws his way instead.

"Nah," Lyla chastens, elbowing him and holding up her own drink, a bottle of Sprite. "Not in this yard."

Across the way, AJ stops in the middle of a sentence to wave in excited surprise as he catches sight of Oliver. "Oliver! Hey, Oliver!" Oliver laughs and waves back and AJ beams, seamlessly picking up his story right where he'd left off, his words tripping over themselves giddily. 

"I'm gonna take a long shot and guess his team won," Oliver says, sotto voce to Lyla. 

She grins. "Ten to three."

"Nice."

It's a hot day, but there's plenty of shady spots in the backyard, and three coolers full of drinks and ice to chew on. After they eat, Carly turns on the sprinkler and AJ runs off the last of his energy playing water tag with Sin, and Oliver spends most of the afternoon sitting in a plastic lawn chair next to Lyla, both of them slowly getting wet as the hose gets kicked closer and closer, every time AJ runs their way. 

She's got _amazing_ stories. Oliver sort of wants to sit and listen to her talk forever about Afghanistan and Syria, about her childhood in D.C., about working at Langley and that time she drank beer with Michelle Obama, and he thinks that Lyla wouldn't actually mind all that much. From the fond but exasperated looks that Carly and Digg keep sending their way, he'd guess that she doesn't get a captive audience all that often.

"See, this is why I like you," Lyla says eventually, tapping his bicep lightly with the lip of her soda bottle. "You're so nice to talk to, you just sit there and look impressed with everything, even when it sounds like total bullshit."

"Is it total bullshit?" Oliver asks. He wouldn't have thought so, but maybe he's wrong.

"No, but it sure sounds like it," Lyla replies, with a quick, fierce grin. 

"I was stranded for five years on a deserted island with my girlfriend," Oliver says. "We lived in a wrecked airplane and hunted pigs for food. I don't have much room to judge."

Lyla laughs. "Pigs - really?"

"Well, boar, I think," Oliver says with a shrug. "I don't know. They tasted alright."

Lyla shakes her head in amazement. "Somebody up there was lookin' after you two. That's for sure."

"It wasn't actually that bad," Oliver says, and pauses to take a drink, surprised at himself. He hasn't dared to say this out loud to anyone but Sara. "You - get used to it, after awhile. And we had everything we needed to survive, it wasn't - it was hard, but it wasn't the worst thing."

Lyla nods thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess I know what you mean," she says. "That's what it was like in - you know."

"Coming back is harder," Oliver says, the honesty scraping painfully against his throat.

Lyla nods again, reaching over and tapping the neck of her soda bottle against his. "Yeah."

They drink in silence for a few moments, watching Sin and Carly, getting cheerfully drunk on the deck, and Digg, kicking a soccer ball around with AJ.

"You're the DD tonight?" Oliver asks, the thought occurring to him suddenly.

"Nah, I think everyone's just crashing here tonight," Lyla replies. She looks over and smiles, a little shyly. "I'm, uh, pregnant, actually. Can't drink."

Oliver actually rears backward in his chair in surprise. "What - you're having a baby?"

"Don't tell anyone," Lyla says, grin widening at his expression. "We've got a group email thing going out tomorrow, you'll ruin the surprise."

Oliver covers his smile with one hand, unable to keep the happiness off of his face. "Lyla, that's amazing. That's so amazing."

"Thanks," Lyla replies, reaching out and squeezing his outstretched hand. Oliver blinks at her touch; he hadn't even realized he was reaching out to her. "You should've seen Johnny when I told him, he about had a heart attack. He had to go splash water on his face."

Oliver laughs. "Congratulations," he says, as fiercely as he feels about this, the idea of Digg and Lyla as parents, of Carly as an aunt, AJ as a cousin. "Am I the first to say it? Congratulations."

"Well, other than Carly," Lyla says. She releases his hand and sits back in her chair, looking a little flushed, with pleasure or embarrassment, Oliver doesn't know. "Thanks."

"I'm honored," Oliver says, "but why do I get the exclusive?"

Lyla shrugs. "Because you listen to my stories," she replies, like it should be obvious.

 

 

It's storming the morning of Sara's party, rain falling from the heavens in sheets. Sara declares it to be a sign, pointedly not looking over at Thea and Moira, rolling their eyes in tandem at the breakfast table. 

"Well, somebody's a big fat downer," Thea says, shooting a significant look at Oliver, who tries to look as stoic as he possibly can. Nothing good can come from him getting involved in this. 

"I'm just realistic," Sara teases, apparently not taking offense. Her determined grumpiness about the party seems more affectation than anything else this morning; she seems a little excited even, Oliver dares to think. "My birthday's practically cursed, and look - the sky agrees with me. I hope you've got lightning rods on the club, Thea, because you'll probably need 'em."

The yacht trip had been for Sara's birthday. Officially, anyway, and not it's not like everyone doesn't know that was just an excuse, but Oliver had still forgotten. 

"The only way to beat a curse," Moira says wisely, "is to pretend it doesn't exist. That's the best way to ensure that something good will happen." Thea beams at her, while Moira sips her coffee serenely, looking sly. "Don't you agree, Sara?"

"Makes sense," Sara says, grinning outright.

"Well, better hedge our bets anyway," Thea announces, leaping from her seat and retrieving a small Tiffany's box from her purse, setting it next to Sara's plate. "In case we all die before the party tonight - this is from me and Roy."

"Thea," Sara exclaims, "you bought me _jewelry_?"

"Sort of. Open it," Thea urges, and Sara obeys, revealing a familiar pair of emerald earrings. "Roy got these for me for Christmas last year, and I know how much you loved them, when you borrowed them for Laurel's wedding - remember?"

"Thea," Sara says, a little tearfully, reaching up for a hug. 

"I know re-gifting's a little tacky," Thea says, into Sara's hair, "but you like them so much, and you get all weird when we spend money on you, so - "

"Thank you," Sara says emphatically, "no, seriously. Thank you. I love them."

Thea smiles at her, hugging her again and whispering something in Sara's ear before she pulls away, retreating back to her seat. Sara looks at the ground for a few moments, obviously gathering her composure, before she lifts her head, still smiling brightly.

"They look marvelous on you, sweetheart, I've always thought so," Moira says kindly. "You could wear them tonight; they'd go with your dress."

"Maybe," Sara says.

"You should," Oliver encourages. The dress, Moira's gift, is lovely, and Sara looks lovely in it. It is also, probably not coincidentally, the same shade of green as the earrings. 

Sara shoots him a look that says she's probably thinking the same thing. His mother and her plans, Oliver thinks, smiling ruefully back.

"I'm just not used to…" Sara shrugs. "Gifts, I guess. My parents always gave us vacations for birthday presents." She smiles. "Well, my dad did. Mom always snuck us makeup and clothes, when he wasn't looking."

"Well get used to it, birthday girl," Thea says, unapologetically. "That's not the last one you'll get today. Speaking of - I've got to get to the club and start setting up. Mom, did you hear from - "

"Walter's coming straight from the airport," Moira says with a nod. "He might be a bit late, but he'll be there."

"Eight o'clock, right?" Oliver says. 

"I'm sending a car," Moira says, holding up one hand to stall Sara's protest. "No, no, please, indulge me. This way I can be sure you're not going to escape out the window at the last second."

"I wouldn't," Sara mutters. She fingers the earring box restlessly, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. 

"Of course not," Oliver says serenely. Thea smirks. 

"I've arranged for one to pick up your mother and stepfather as well," Moira continues. "Detective Lance refused, although that's not exactly a surprise. Laurel never returned my call though, do you suppose - "

"She's not coming," Sara interrupts. Moira snaps her mouth shut, setting her coffee cup down in its saucer with a sharp click of ceramic. "That big case, the arsonist. She's in court all day tomorrow; she said she didn't have time."

Moira and Thea instantly fall into identical looks of offense that make Oliver feel weirdly defensive - as if this is anything new, as if Laurel and Sara haven't been trading passive-aggressive insults such as this since they learned how to talk. It gets better, then it gets worse, that's how it goes with Laurel and Sara - even before Oliver himself came into the equation, it was like that. 

Not that it's an excuse, for what they did to Laurel, but. Oliver's sick to death of paying for it, is all. 

"It's fine," Sara says, brushing it off. "No, really. Thea - you better go, try and beat rush hour into town."

"Right," Thea says, sliding past the awkwardness deftly. She's used to doing that, after all. "Eight sharp. You better be there, ready for the night of your life."

"Eight," Sara agrees, leaning into Thea's kiss, hard and playful on her cheekbone. "Night of my life. Got it."

"I would trust Thea when it comes to such things," Moira says. "She does it for a living, after all."

"Yeah, I'm damn good at it, too," Thea says. It kind of sounds like a threat.

 

 

Sara tugs Oliver back upstairs after Moira leaves for the office, something about a meeting she can't get out of. 

"We've got the whole place to ourselves," Sara says, pushing her hands up beneath his shirt, practically bouncing with good cheer. Oliver is helpless to it, awestruck by it even. He'd been expecting sadness, discontent, not - this.

"Whatever shall we do," he says, grunting out loud when Sara pushes him back onto the bed, taking him by surprise.

"Don't think I haven't noticed that you haven't given me my present yet," she says, climbing into his lap, all arms and elbows. Oliver laughs a little as she situates herself on his chest, paying no more attention to his comfort than she would to a couch. "I know you got me one."

"I thought you didn't want presents," Oliver says.

"From other people, not from you," Sara says. "Why do you think I asked you not to do it?"

Oliver laughs again. "It's in my briefcase," he says. "I was saving it for the party."

Sara lifts her head up, eyeing the case where it sits, beneath the desk. "Is it jewelry?"

"No."

"Perfume?"

"Fuck no."

Sara grins. "Lingerie?"

"That would be more a present for me, don't you think?" Sara laughs. "Go get it, if you're so curious."

"Nah, I can wait." Sara squeezes her thighs around Oliver's waist, like a little nudge, reminding him that she's there, and waiting for him to touch her, thank you very much. Oliver complies, palming her thighs and feeling the muscles shift beneath his hands. "I got you a gift too. Sorta."

"I'm not sure that's how birthdays are supposed to work," Oliver says, rubbing his thumbs down the inner seam of her thin sweatpants, making her shiver.

"Yeah, well, I'm a rebel without a cause," Sara says, "from the wrong side of the tracks, a loose cannon." She grins, and leans down for a kiss, biting at his lip as she pulls away. "You never know what I'm gonna do."

Oliver grins and kisses her again, swallowing her little yelp of surprise when he squeezes her waist to startle her. He's rarely aggressive in bed, not like this, anymore - but sometimes, when it feels right, he likes to take her off guard. Serves her right, he thinks.

"So a present for me," he says, reaching up and tugging the collar of her shirt down. She's got that blue bra on, he notices with delight, the one with the lace, that's so thin and sort of scratchy that it drives her crazy when he kisses her through it. "Because I've been good, or because you've been bad?"

Sara hums, arching her back a little so he can get his mouth on her nipples, laughing a little breathlessly when he bites down playfully. "Oh, we're both bad," she says, and laughs again, pushing away and climbing off his lap. "Stay there."

Oliver waits obediently, watching as she pulls her clothes off lazily, tossing them to the floor without a thought. She pads into the bathroom and shoots him a sort of...weird look over her shoulder before she disappears, kind of apprehensive maybe, but Oliver doesn't have much time to digest it because when she comes back out, she's wearing glasses.

Felicity-style glasses, to be specific, and as he watches she keeps eye contact and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. Oliver gets instantly hard, so quickly he gets a little head rush.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," he says.

"We're both very bad," Sara says, voice throaty and low, like he usually only hears it in the middle of sex, when she's having an orgasm or talking him through one, rasping in his ear to _fuck me harder, right there, just like that._

God, it's so wrong, Oliver thinks, disrespectful and inappropriate and...something else, but he's tired of their mistakes and tired of paying for them, so there'll be time for guilt later. Right now, there's just Sara, who's grinning like she used to before the island, leaning against the doorway and tugging off her panties, dressed up like their greatest secret and asking to play.

They deserve it, don't they? Surely, they deserve _something._

"Get over here right now," Oliver demands, and Sara grins, discarding her underwear and letting him pull her down on the bed, laughing loudly as he straddles her waist and pins her wrists to the duvet. "I can't _believe_ you - "

"It's my birthday," Sara says, with an exaggerated pout, thrusting up with her hips and making him groan. "And you've been slacking lately at yoga, mister. Don't think I haven't noticed."

Oliver kisses her again, greeting the rush of adrenaline like an old friend. "Well, show me some moves, then," he says, and lets himself fall.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some content warnings for this chapter: a reference to suicide (robert queen's canonical death), vaguer references to suicidal ideation and self-harm. oliver also has a flashback in this chapter; thank you to erin (peacefulboo) for looking that section over for me. i want you guys to know that i'm not an expert in anything; most of oliver's thoughts and feelings are drawn from my own experiences. like - obviously i've never been stranded on a deserted island or anything, but the rest of it is me, plus some research, if you catch my drift.
> 
> for those of you who are still with me and this fic - thanks for sticking around, i promise i will finish the last chapter at some point before i die, and i hope this is even a little bit as constructive and cathartic for you to read as it was for me to write.

Nobody in that first hospital spoke any English, so there were five or six days where Oliver and Sara mostly slept and ate and listened to the radio while nurses floated in and out of their room, handing them notes with instructions printed out from a computer: _press the buzzer if you feel sick_ , and _where in America are you from?_ and _do you remember your family's phone?_ It all felt like a weird dream, honestly. Every sunrise he saw, from the window of a hospital room, seemed like a cruel, taunting joke, a fantasy that was about to disappear at any minute.

He still feels like that sometimes; there are these moments of vertigo where he looks around, at his office, at the mansion, at his family, smiling at him from across a table and he thinks: _I'm asleep. I'm asleep. I have to be asleep._ The dreams don't help, in that sense.

They were taken to Hong Kong, where a lawyer stood stoically in the corner of the room as they were examined by more doctors, given more food and more water and asked more questions. Then more lawyers, more questions. Police officers, people with badges, a psychiatrist who tried to separate them. Sara had a panic attack and one of the doctors banned him from the hospital; there were less questions, after that.

When they got home, Sara went to live with her parents, of course. Neither of them were aware enough - or brave enough, maybe - to speak up about it. It didn't go very well, for anyone involved, which Oliver supposes they should have predicted. But there are mistakes that you have to make, sometimes, if for no other reason than to win an argument with yourself.

Oliver's made a lot of mistakes. So has Sara. There's no making up for some of them, and some of the things they've lost, they deserved to lose. Oliver will never know Laurel's friendship again, and Sara will spend the rest of her life earning back her family's trust: these are things they have to accept. If you make a mess, you have to live in it.

This is why his grief feels so unfair: it's a mess he didn't make. That's the difference, really - when you're the one fucking it up, at least you can see it coming.

 

 

It rains the entire rest of the day, but good sex has a way of making you not care about inconvenient things, like how wet your shoes get during the walk from the car to the club. There're always spare ones in Roy's office, anyway.

Thea has cheerfully embraced the rain, at any rate, opening the blinds on the skylights to let the lightning in, keeping the music low so they can hear the rhythmic sounds of the rainfall on the ceiling, which is oddly soothing and fitting, for the kind of party this is. She kept to her promise of "small and intimate," and outside of Digg and Lyla - chatting with Walter by the buffet, a rather foreboding combination - and Sin, who sticks to Sara's side like a chatty, leather-clad extra appendage, there's nobody there they aren't related to, in some way. Everyone Sara trusts is in this room.

Well. Except - 

"It's fine," Sara says, showing Oliver the text. He's just received the same one, on his own phone, but he's not about to tell her that. It'd make it worse, somehow, that she'd sent it to both of them at the same time, and Sara seems like she doesn't need anything worse, at the moment. "She's sick, it happens. It's not a big deal."

It's not fine, and it is a big deal, and that much is clear. Even Felicity's text seems to acknowledge it - it's almost rushed, and has glaring typos that Felicity would normally never tolerate. _im really sorry_ , she'd sent. Oliver tries not to get angry, remembering the conversation at dinner, how Felicity had been the one to coax Sara into being excited about this in the first place. Laurel isn't here, either. Dinah's coming with her fiance, but they're an hour late, and counting. So he's pretty angry anyway.

"Sara," he says.

Sara shrugs. She's clad all in green, Thea's earrings sparkling at the corners of her jaw, and she's white knuckling her champagne glass like it might run away at any second. "I'm fine. I'm not upset."

Across the room, Thea switches the music to one of Sara's favorite songs, waving cheerfully at them. Lyla laughs loudly at something Walter's just said, tossing her head back, and Sin is heading their way with a smile and two fresh drinks. 

"Seriously," Sara says, quiet and brittle, eyeing the party with the same expression Oliver remembers clearest from the island, sitting outside their plane, watching the sky for oncoming clouds. "I am _not upset_."

"Okay," Oliver says. What else can he say?

Sara drains the rest of her drink and visibly fortifies herself, setting the empty glass aside.

"Now that's what I'm talking about," Sin says in approval. She offers the other one to Oliver. "It's ginger ale," she says. "Didn't want you to feel left out. Ha! Bet you thought I forgot again, didn't ya?"

Oliver smiles weakly and accepts the flute. "Thanks, Sin."

"No prob." She slides up next to Sara, who smiles and wraps her arm around her shoulder amiably. Oliver still isn't sure that one of the reasons Sara likes Sin so much is because she's one of the few people in Starling City who's shorter than she is. "You lovebirds done whispering over here or what? Cuz this is a party, you know, and there _is_ a huge pile of presents over there waiting to be opened."

"Now that's what _I'm_ talking about," Sara replies. Sin laughs and leads her off, leaving Oliver to trail behind, cautiously, in their wake. 

Oliver doesn't do very well with crowds, even small ones, which he has a feeling is painfully obvious to everyone. He endures about half an hour at Sara's side, stiffly standing guard while she opens gifts and laughs and talks too loudly, until his mother finally waylays him, plucking the full, untouched flute out of his hand and leading him towards the bar.

"You looked like you were about to have a stroke," Moira says, caught somewhere halfway between concern and amusement. "Here. I think Thea keeps some iced coffee back here somewhere."

"I'm fine," Oliver says, glancing back over his shoulder. Sara's still opening presents with a giant, fake smile stretched across her face. Next to her, Thea raises her eyebrows at Oliver, looking vaguely weirded out. Oliver just shrugs at her, at a loss for what else to do, and when he turns away, he can still feel Thea's eyes on his back.

"Well, indulge me," Moira says, moving around behind the bar with surprising confidence, fixing him a coffee. It's one of the more absurd things Oliver's seen lately, but he supposes he shouldn't be too surprised. Moira Queen is nothing if not adaptable. "Here. Have you eaten?"

No. "Yes," Oliver says.

"Mmhm." Moira settles down on her elbows across from him with her own drink - a tall glass of bourbon, which has been her signature for as long as Oliver can remember. Robert used to give her crap about it, and when he was in high school, so did Oliver. Moira endured it with grace, although he knows it must have made her feel patronized. "Of course you wouldn't lie to me about that, or anything."

"I strive to be an extremely truthful person, Mother," Oliver says, and sips at the coffee. It's from Thea's personal stash, so it's like drinking blacktop tar, but it's better than ginger ale, at least. "May God strike me down where I stand should I ever lie to your face."

Moira laughs. "Strike you down again, you mean?" Oliver shrugs, smiling. "You are your father's son, Oliver."

Oliver takes a deep breath, keeping his eyes on his drink. She hadn't meant that to be insulting. There's no reason to feel stung.

"Of course," Moira continues, "I'm hardly one to talk either. Do you remember that quote that your sister had on that sign - remember? She pinned it up on her door when she was...oh, eleven, twelve maybe - "

"'Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children,'" Oliver supplies, laughing at the memory. Thea had been such a sharp, passive-aggressive little shit. The best out of all of them, really. "I don't remember who said it."

"Some novelist she pretended to like." Moira shook her head, her face distant and fond. "She - Walter gave her all these books of his, while you were...gone. It was clever of him, actually, because she was so committed to acting like she was smarter than everyone else, so she couldn't refuse them like she wanted to. He would ask her questions about them too, so eventually she started reading them, just so she could try and embarrass him. He basically outmaneuvered her into liking him."

"He's a hell of a chess player," Oliver comments. 

"Yes." Moira smiles. "That he is."

Oliver falls into silence with her, turning slightly on the stool so he can watch Sara's gift opening. There's an impressive pile growing at her feet - clothes and books and other trinkets that Oliver already knows Sara will shove into a closet in their room, too embarrassed about it all to enjoy any of it. His own gift is sitting in her lap, unopened. He knows she's saving it for last. 

"Thea inherited that from him," Moira says, after a moment. "Look at this party, for example." She pauses. "I don't think Sara would have gone along with it, if it'd been anyone else."

Thea inherited that from all of them, Oliver thinks. Normal families don't have to outmaneuver each other in order to express their love. It's taken him years to realize that. 

"She's good at what she does," Oliver says neutrally. 

"Yes," Moira agrees, and sips her bourbon. Across the room, Sara laughs too loudly again, and Oliver winces. "Is she - "

"We're fine," Oliver says, and Moira wisely abandons her question. 

"If you say so," she says, and pats his arm. Oliver forcibly keeps himself still until she pulls away. 

 

 

There were moments, with his father, that Oliver remembers not having context for, at the time - these strange conversations they'd have sometimes, when Robert would get a little too drunk at a party and pull Oliver aside, his face flushed and his eyes bright with intensity. He was never maudlin, when he was drinking, but he was...different. That mask of cheerfulness he usually wore was gone. Even as a kid, Oliver had known that the man his father pretended to be was not the man he was, but it was those unguarded, gin-soaked moments that gave him a glimpse at his father's truth, things that wouldn't make sense until years later: _don't lose sight of the line, son,_ and _you wouldn't be this proud of me, if you knew what I do all day,_ or _the Queen legacy - it's a joke. A got-damn joke! Don't let your mother convince you otherwise. She doesn't know the half of it._

He has to wonder if that's true; his mother is a smart woman, and underestimating her is always, _always_ a mistake. He's read all the court transcripts - Moira's testimony, Walter's, Malcolm Merlyn's. They didn't know, they didn't see it, they had no idea, he never discussed that with us, we didn't have access to those files, et cetera, et al - of course that's what they'd say. You don't get to be as successful as these people are without learning how to read the writing on the wall. 

Robert was less smart, maybe. He didn't know the meaning of halfway. He didn't just fall in love, he fell in _true love_. He didn't just start a company, he started an empire. He decorated every room of the house, had a car in every garage, a hand in every deal, a bribe in every pocket. When Thea asked for a puppy, Robert bought her a pony. When Oliver asked for help, he took them to China.

He was the ultimate _all or nothing_ man. He looked at the empty horizon, their half-empty bottles of clean water, their single lifejacket, and decided the only option was to shoot himself in the head - as if that were _heroic_ , as if Oliver would _thank_ him. As if there wasn't an island, two days away, hidden in the fog. As if they couldn't have drank rainwater instead.

Robert Queen may have loved his children, but love doesn't make you healthy. If there is such a thing as a Queen legacy, then learning that lesson the hard way is probably it. 

 

 

He has to admire her for it, in a strange way. He should've seen it coming, to be quite honest - if he'd been a little less distracted, he would have, but she probably knew that. She knew just when to do it, too - right after Lyla mentions her pregnancy, in the midst of the flurry of conversation that produces, Sara somehow manages to disappear from her own birthday party without so much as a "thanks for the gift card, Walter." Thea's the first one to notice, which Oliver will be immensely grateful for later.

"Hey," Thea says in a low, too-casual-to-be-casual voice, sidling up next to Oliver at the bar, "come with me real quick."

"What? Oh," Oliver stutters, letting her take his arm and lead him off the dance floor, back into the little office behind the bar, where the bouncers keep their stuff. Roy and Moira are already in there, the former nearly blending into the walls and the latter looking almost absurdly out of place. Oliver blinks stupidly at them both. "Uh. What's going on?"

"Darling," Moira says, but before she can finish, Roy says, "Sara took off," and Oliver's stomach does a sort of strange, sick twist. Moira scowls. 

"We don't - we were thinking she might have said something to you," Thea says, shooting an equally irritated scowl at Roy, who just rolls his eyes at the entire room in response. "The last time I saw her, she said she was going to the bathroom, but that was like twenty minutes ago and the restrooms are all empty."

"Even the ones downstairs?" Oliver asks. "And no, she didn't say anything to me."

"Maybe she texted you," Moira suggests. Oliver pulls out his phone and checks, but the only unread message is the one from Felicity. Oliver hasn't opened it yet, out of some strange, passive-aggressive impulse that he's trying hard not to examine right now. "We checked all the restrooms, Oliver - we even looked at the security feeds. She's not in the building."

"Okay," Oliver says. _This is fine, not a big deal_ , he thinks. "I'll call her. She probably just got overwhelmed and went home."

"Probably," Moira agrees, still looking unflappable and much more elegant than she should, leaning against a green card table with somebody's abandoned gym bag on it. "We would've tried calling ourselves, but none of us wanted to...crowd her." 

Roy gets a look on his face like he wants to roll his eyes again, but he probably doesn't want to risk it with Thea standing so close and wearing spiky heels. " _I_ texted her. She didn't reply."

"Probably because her phone is _off_ ," Oliver says, ending the call with a frustrated huff. "It just went straight to voicemail."

"Oh," says Thea. There is a moment of heavy, loaded silence.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," says Moira, frowning deeply. 

"Right, of course, it's probably nothing," Thea says quickly, "this is Sara. She's fine. I'm sure she's fine. She has her cell phone, and her wallet, with all her cards and cash, and she knows all she has to do is call and someone will come get her."

"We don't know that she has her cell phone," Oliver says evenly. "If she had it with her, she would have left it on."

Roy and Thea adopt an almost-identical look of skepticism at that. "Uh," Thea says, "are you sure - "

"She wouldn't turn it off," Oliver snaps, his patience pulling taut as a guitar string. "She wouldn't - "

"Oliver," Moira says firmly, and Oliver snaps his mouth shut, taking a deep breath. "She could have told someone else where she was going, we should ask the other guests - discreetly. Thea?"

"Right," Thea says faintly, but the sick twist in Oliver's stomach is back, wringing itself into knots, burrowing their way through his intestines like acid. 

"I'm going back to the mansion to look for her."

"Ollie, she's fine. Look at me!" Thea reaches out for his arm, but stops at the last second, jerking back sharply. Oliver stares at her hand, perplexed. "Don't go there. Don't even think it. She does this, right? She takes off when it gets too much. It's not like - it's not like the other time. I'm sure of it."

"Yeah, man, she's done this kind of thing before. Nothing to worry about," is Roy's contribution, and something about the casual way he says it makes Oliver's temper flare, hot and quick and fast. 

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Roy takes a step back, eyeing him warily. "Nothing, man," he says. Thea reaches out to grab his arm, looking up at Oliver with wide eyes. "Nothing, just - "

"Just that she's a drunk," Oliver finishes for him, "and we should expect this from her, right? I mean, that's what we're all thinking."

"Nobody's thinking that, Ollie," Thea says. She has that careful tone to her voice now, the same tone that Meridian gets sometimes. It only makes Oliver angrier, to think that he's being condescended to. "We're just saying - she's an adult, she can take care of herself. That's all."

"Right, and that's why you pulled me in here?" Oliver asks, incredulous. "'Sara took off, did she say anything? Did she text you?' Come on - "

"We were just worried!" Thea cries. "But there's no need to fucking _freak out_ , God - "

"Alright, enough," Moira says, cutting through the fight with her cold steel. "Oliver, you're upset. Go calm down. Thea, you and Roy go take care of your guests. Ask if anyone's seen her. I will take the limo back to the mansion, which is most likely where she is."

Thea and Oliver both bristle at that. "Are you _serious_?" Thea says. "No, fuck that, we're going to - "

"Do not speak to me like that again, Thea," Moira interrupts, and Thea falls abruptly silent, her eyes going wide. "We're wasting time. Do as I say and I'll see you both at home."

Moira waits for nods, from both of them, and Oliver barely manages, his chest burning. He waits until she sweeps out of the room, her shoulders straight, and then staggers to the folding chair at the card table, breathing hard. 

"I fucking _hate_ it when she does that," he hears Thea say, on the verge of angry tears, "just - orders us around like we're children. I hate it." Roy murmurs something back, and Thea again: "no! Don't defend her - " and Oliver's chest is still burning, and he can't stop thinking about the time Sara went hunting and didn't come back for two days, and Oliver found her stuck at the bottom of the ravine with a sprained ankle, and she got sick after because she didn't have anything to make a fire to boil the water from the stream before she drank it and she had to eat that fungus stuff that grew on the rocks which they were never sure about and it's almost winter so it's cold, too cold out, he wraps her up in tent canvas and keeps the fire going day and night but she still can't stop shivering - 

"Don't worry," Sara keeps saying, stretching her blue mouth into a grin, "don't worry, I'm fine. Just let me sleep for a little bit."

"We should use the last of the penicillin from the first aid kit," Oliver says.

"No, Oliver," Sara says, "no, we should save it. I can get through this, it's just a cold. It's just a cold, _Oliver_!"

"What if it isn't?" She doesn't _know_. It could be something else, something they can't cure. They don't _know_ anything. Two semesters of botany between them and a water-stained CPR guide from the life raft, that's all they've got, like any of it could stop death if it really wanted to take them and it _could_ , it could _any time_ , and she doesn't _get it -_

Sara just shakes her head again, exasperated. "Oliver. _Oliver_!" 

Oliver blinks, looking up at Roy sharply, irritated. "What," he says. Why the hell is he yelling? "Christ, _what_?"

Roy's got his hands on Oliver's shoulders, and his face is pale. Oliver blinks again.

"Oh," he says. Right, he's at Verdant. It happened again. 

"Are you with me?" Roy asks, smooth and calm.

"Yeah. I'm fine." Oliver shakes his head, reaching up and grabbing Roy's arm. He'd meant to just grip it once, as a thank you, but now that he's done it, he's not sure he can let go yet. "I'm fine, I - did I say anything?"

"Just a few things," Roy says quietly. "Nothing major. Don't worry about it."

Oliver tries to regulate his breathing; his heart is beating so fast it hurts a little. "Where's Thea?"

"She - " Roy grimaces a little. "She got a little hysterical, I had to make her leave. She's just out in the hallway."

"God," Oliver says, on a groan. He leans away from Roy, who instantly lets him go, and braces himself on the desk, cradling his head in his hands. "God. You should go check on her."

"Not until I'm sure you're alright," Roy says. Oliver looks over at him sharply; Roy's expression doesn't budge. "She's fine."

Oliver sighs, sinking his face back into his hands again. Of all people, of course it had to be Thea and Roy. Of course.

"What can I do for you? You need some water or something?" Oliver is overly aware of where Roy is standing, close enough to touch, but far away enough that he can't feel his body heat. "Thea told me it helps when someone touches you but I don't know if that made it worse…"

"No, it helps." Most of the panic is gone now, and in its place a bone-deep weariness. Like he's soaking wet again, crawling his way up the beach, clothes heavy from the water but too weak and tired to get them off. "I'm okay now. Really. Go check on Thea."

"If you're sure," Roy says. 

"Yeah." Oliver waits until Roy's left the room to lay his forehead on the table, breathing like they're supposed to do in yoga - in, out through the belly, then the ribs, the heart center, the nose. He's never quite sure if he's doing it right, or even remembering it right, especially the part about the heart center, but it usually relaxes him anyway.

When he's calm enough - as calm as he can ever manage, anyway - he checks his phone again. Nothing from Sara, but the message from Felicity is still there, the red little 'one' notification on the icon a nagging reminder. Oliver taps into it without thinking much about it, and sends a reply that he knows he'll regret, even as he's typing it out. 

He stares at the text log for a very long time, but she doesn't text back. Not like he was expecting her to, but - well, maybe that's a lie. His hands are shaking.

 _This is fine_ , he thinks again, and locks his phone, and closes his eyes. _Not a big deal._

 

 

Oliver doesn't see Thea again that night - he's cognizant enough to recognize that it's probably a good thing, for both of them. Roy comes back in at some point with a bottle of Evian and Digg, who takes one look at Oliver and says, "alright, you're coming with me," and the no-nonsense steel in his voice is the most comforting thing Oliver's heard all night.

He's not really...aware of how he gets from the break room to the car, or - maybe he's aware, because he's fairly certain Digg didn't carry him out over his shoulder or anything, but he doesn't remember it. It passes in flashes, gasps of air when he manages to break through the surface of the water, a glimpse of dry land in the split second before he sinks back beneath the waves again. 

Lyla sits next to him in the back seat, her hands calm and steady on his arm, and Oliver realizes at some point that she and Digg are talking - to each other, not to him, which is a relief. When he thinks about this night later, he'll remember that - the spicy scent of Lyla's perfume, the up and down lull of their voices, the gentle rhythm of the streetlights that light up the car in soft little pulses. 

At some point, they must go through a drive-thru, because Oliver somehow acquires a cheeseburger that he eats as slowly as he can, stymied by the strange feeling of being ravenous and nauseous at the same time. Lyla leans against him with her own sandwich, nudging at his arm to remind him to drink water in-between bites, still carrying on her low conversation with Digg. Like it's nothing out of the ordinary, like this is all just...normal. 

"So look," she says, after most of the food is gone - and Oliver is a little bit more present - "we were going to take you home, but do you want to stay with us tonight? Don't say no unless you mean it."

"You guys don't have to," Oliver starts, but Lyla shakes her head sharply, probably knowing where that's about to go without having to hear it. "I should...I should get home."

"If you're sure," Digg says from up front, glancing over his shoulder as he takes a right turn. Oliver catches a glimpse of his face; it's calm, grave and kind. If there ever was a description to encapsulate the Diggle family, that's it. 

"Sara might be there," Oliver says, and Digg nods silently, turning back to the road. Lyla smiles, and nods towards the rest of Oliver's food.

"Can't get dessert if you don't clean your plate," she says, and Oliver very suddenly has to choke back the urge to cry. 

"Thank you," he manages, and Lyla shrugs and nudges his arm again. 

"Don't mention it," she says, and Oliver leans back against her warm and comforting shoulder, and for the first time all night, manages to stop thinking. 

 

 

The thing is, everyone thinks they're crazy. They don't say it, but Oliver can tell whenever they're thinking it: especially people like Tommy, who only see Oliver and Sara sparingly, and in mostly casual, impersonal contexts. They get this kind of _look,_ like they're doing a math problem in their head, and they start talking in that careful, wary way that therapists use. They use words like "relax" and "reasonable" and "prescriptions," and they don't trust anything Oliver or Sara have to say, even when what they're saying is true, even when it's stuff that only they would know, like the state of their own fucking heads. 

None of this would be half as difficult if they were doing it alone, which Oliver only feels a little bit guilty about thinking. Because - they've always been alone, he and Sara, even before the island. There's a reason they had an affair in the first place, after all, and it wasn't because neither of them loved Laurel enough - and they _did._ They still do, even if Laurel doesn't believe it, but love isn't always what you need. When your leg is broken, you scream. When your heart is breaking, you cry. But when your own mind betrays you - what then? You run away, of course. You run as fast as you can, until you feel okay again. 

That's the part nobody understands, and Oliver isn't capable or sane enough to figure out how to explain it - it's not that Sara wanted to harm herself, last summer. She didn't, would never, want that, would never even think of doing that, if not for her own sake then for her family's, and Oliver's. It's just that sometimes, the noise gets too loud and the lights get too bright, and she has to back off for a bit until she can see straight again, and doing that is more important than explaining herself to the cloying, oppressive mob that is their family, so excuse the hell out of her for not leaving a voicemail. 

It's ridiculous to resent it, but Oliver does anyway, he can't help it. Five years, they were on that island, and nobody has any idea. None of them _know,_ and even if he wanted to tell them all of it, they still wouldn't get it. They were _alone._ For five years, they were the only two people in the universe, and they survived sickness and storms and starvation and the cold, dark pull of the riptides, and now that they're home, where the most dangerous thing either of them face is rush hour traffic, they can't tie their own fucking shoes without someone asking if they need to take a pill to help them manage it. 

He knows they care, he knows they mean well. But caring isn't what Oliver needs. He doesn't know what he _does_ need, just that it's _something_ he's missing, and if they could just give him a little space to breathe, he might be able to figure it out. 

 

 

Oliver dreams about Felicity that night, intense almost-nightmares with a sinister edge to them that leave him unsettled, disturbed. Waking up doesn't seem to dissipate them like it normally would; every time he falls back asleep his brain picks it up right where he'd left off, like it was waiting for him to return, a movie set on pause.

They're making love, or at least going through the motions of it, but he can't see her face, it's blurred out somehow, a smear of color. She's crying, or someone is, and the room is cold. It goes on like that, all night, until he wakes up at dawn with a blistering headache and a heavy weight of sadness on his chest.

Downstairs, Raisa's up and waiting for him with coffee, strong with lots of vanilla creamer, like she makes it when it's just her and Oliver drinking it. "Sara didn't come home, but she is alright," she informs him, in her matter-of-fact way. "She called early this morning to let me know."

"Thanks," Oliver says. His head is still pounding, though the coffee helps, a bit. He feels hungover; although it's been so long since he was hungover that he can't really be sure. "It's nothing," he says, feeling the urge to explain, even though Raisa's face is gentle and kind, even though he knows he doesn't need to. "She - does this, a lot, she stays over at Sin's, or Felicity's - "

His voice breaks a little on the name, humiliatingly. Raisa reaches out and touches his shoulder.

"Solnyshko," she says, "maybe you should go sleep, for a little bit longer."

Oliver shakes his head. "No. I'm fine."

Raisa smiles sadly. "Things will work out," she says sagely, squeezing his shoulder. 

"You think so?" Oliver says.

"Well, you are alive," Raisa says. "You were gone five years - five years! But we knew - Mrs. Queen and Thea and I - we always knew." She squeezes him again, hard. "Life makes a path for you. You just have to be patient and wait until you can see it."

Oliver swallows the lump in his throat and nods. She's wrong, of course, but it's a nice thing to think about.

If Moira or Thea are home, Raisa doesn't mention it, and the mansion is large enough that Oliver probably won't see them anyway, unless he wants to. He spends most of the morning in the kitchen with Raisa, drinking coffee and chatting with her as she works. She's making bread, for her niece's charity drive at school, and she lets Oliver make the cuts on the top of the loaves, which has been his job since he was ten years old. 

"Remember when you were young? So short you couldn't even reach the counter," Raisa says, puttering around the island and leaving a trail of flour in her wake. "I had this little step stool for you to stand on so you could help knead the dough. Thea decorated it for you."

"I hated that thing," Oliver recalls, smiling down into his mug. "She put so much glitter on it, it'd flake off on my feet every time I used it."

"Yes, you were such a serious little boy, you had no time for such glittery things," Raisa teases, and Oliver laughs. "But I could always tell where you'd been and what cookie jar you'd been into - you left footprints!" 

"So it _was_ strategic," Oliver says. "I knew it."

"Everything is strategic in this house," Raisa says fondly, and well - she's got a point, there. 

It's a nice morning, and it helps Oliver get his solid ground back. Raisa's worry isn't oppressive the way Moira's is, or even Thea's. He mixes what she puts in front of him, tastes the dough that she holds out on a fork, does what she directs him to do without having to think much about it, and it's just - nice. 

They've moved onto the clean up portion of the process when the chime on the intercom goes off, the signal from the security at the gate that they've let someone through to the front door. Raisa leaves him to finish loading the dishwasher (another job that has always been Oliver's, a job he secretly always enjoyed, even if he complained when he was younger) and Oliver stops working for a long moment after she leaves the room, his instincts shrieking at him, because he already knows who will be with Raisa when she returns. Maybe he's known all morning, on some level. Maybe he's been expecting it ever since he sent that text, last night.

Objectively, Felicity looks terrible; her hair is unwashed and pulled into a knot that teeters haphazardly on the top of her head, her eyes look bruised and bloodshot, and none of her clothes match. She's wearing her backup glasses, which are too small for her, and her face is all pinched up, like she's got a headache. She looks incredibly nervous, and a little bit nauseous too, and Oliver knows exactly how she feels.

"Oliver, look who's here!" Raisa says, gently pushing Felicity into the kitchen, guiding her by her shoulders, presenting her to Oliver like a showcase prize at the end of a game show. "Our friend Felicity! Oh, it's so nice to finally meet her - you know, I was wondering if they all just made you up." 

Felicity looks vaguely overwhelmed, nodding and smiling wanly in the face of Raisa's effusive cheerfulness. The general terribleness of her appearance can't have gone unnoticed, but Raisa is not the type of person to comment on such things. "Well," Felicity says, "I feel sort of made up sometimes. So maybe I am. Or maybe we all are."

"I've seen that movie," Oliver says, still standing in front of the open dishwasher, holding a wet sponge and feeling the urge to run away, perhaps while screaming. "Hello, Felicity."

"Hi," Felicity says quietly, not quite meeting Oliver's eyes. She turns to Raisa. "I'm sorry to just show up like this, I probably should have called, but - "

"Oh, who calls anymore, what year is this? No one calls," Raisa dismisses, waving the idea away with one hand. "You are always welcome here, yes? You are here to see Oliver, so you are welcome."

"If Oliver wants to see me, you mean," Felicity says, in a very strange voice. Oliver takes a deep breath and closes the dishwasher. 

"Yes, well he does," Raisa says, like she knows how silly an idea that is, that Oliver might ever _not_ want to see Felicity. Raisa is a smart woman. "We have coffee, and some muffins, I think, from breakfast - Oliver can help you. He's very smart in this kitchen, you see."

"Not as smart as you," Oliver says, and Raisa scoffs at him, flapping her hand impatiently. "Don't worry, I'll make sure she's fed and watered, Raisa. I know what you'll do if I don't."

"Keep an eye on that dough, too - oh, you know what to do. I'll leave you alone." Raisa pats Felicity's shoulder in a gesture that looks almost comforting - and knowing Raisa, that's probably how it was intended. "I'll just be in the pantry."

Felicity's smile weakens as Raisa bustles away, finally disappearing once she and Oliver are alone. That same instinct that had warned him earlier is whispering nasty things to him now; _brace yourself_ , it says. "Hi."

"Hello," Oliver says again, clutching the edge of the sink with one hand and forcing the other to lay still and casual against his side. "We did this part already."

"Right." Felicity rubs at her chin fastidiously, still not looking directly at his face. "I, um. Yeah. I'm sorry to just show up, again, I know I should've called. Or texted you back. I was going to! I was, but my phone died, and I couldn't find my charger when I woke up this morning, and - " she breaks off abruptly, her cheeks flaring red. "Okay, I'm doing it again. I'm sorry."

"I don't mind the rambling," Oliver says honestly. 

"I do," she grumbles in response. She's looking at the counter now, the bowl of bread dough rising on the cutting board. She seems to be steeling herself for something, and Oliver lets her do it, forcing himself to stay still until she's ready. "I came to tell you," she says, slow and determined, "that Sara was with me last night."

Oliver doesn't get it at first, but then he sees how she's still blushing, all the way down to her collar, and then he does. "Oh."

"Yeah." Felicity's voice cracks, and along with it, her expression. "Oliver, I'm so - look, I wanted to be the one to tell you, because it's my fault, mostly. She came over last night and she was upset, and we kind of had a fight and then it - it just happened, and I don't know, I don't know! It was my fault. It _is_ my fault. I'm so - "

"Felicity," Oliver interrupts, as gently as he can. He feels a little bit like he's floating, or like he's not awake, maybe. It feels wrong. Like he's missing something that should be there, in his head, or his heart. "Just slow down, okay? You don't need to be upset."

Felicity just gapes at him a little bit. "I don't - you know, she said you wouldn't be mad but I didn't believe her. Is - oh wait, do you even know what I'm talking about? I mean you get it, right, what I'm trying to say? That Sara and I - " she chokes a little bit, her eyes widening almost comically behind her glasses, something she's seeing, looking at on his face, making them well up. "Oh, God, Oliver, I'm so sorry. I'm so, _so_ sorry."

"I'm not mad," Oliver says blankly. The idea seems strange - should he be mad? It doesn't seem like something he should be mad about. All he feels is sadness, a kind of bone-deep grief that he realizes, in this moment, has been there all along. He's been expecting this. He didn't know he was, but he was. "Don't - don't apologize, please. Don't be _sorry_."

"How can you say that? How can you not be - "

"Sara's had to listen to me apologize for being with her dozens and dozens of times over the past couple of years," Oliver hears himself say. "Don't you start doing it now, too."

Felicity's mouth snaps shut; he thinks he can even hear her teeth click. There's an ache in his chest, something tender and small, that throbs as he looks at her upset, scrunched up face. He wants to touch her hair, give her a hug. He wants to kiss her. Christ, he's going to miss her so much. He already does. 

"Felicity," Oliver says, not knowing what he's about to say, wanting just to say her name out loud. "I'm. This is." She starts to cry, looking at him, and that ache triples in intensity - that's not what he'd meant to do. "Stop. Felicity, please, don't."

"I don't know how any of this happened," she's saying, hugging herself and staring at the floor, "I don't know what to do, Oliver. I don't know how to make this better - everything was so good, and then it got all messed up and I don't know how it happened, I don't know how to _fix it_ \- "

"There's nothing to fix," Oliver says, trying to help, but it only makes her start to cry harder, and isn't that just a big fat metaphor for Oliver's entire life. "Felicity, please, it's okay. Look - I'm...I'll go away for a little bit. A few days, a week, I dunno. It'll give you both time to - it's okay, it's okay. Stop crying, please?" He lurches forward, feeling big and awkward and clumsy, but Felicity grabs onto his hand like she's reaching for a lifeboat, squeezing it with both of hers, still sniffling loudly. "The three of us can...talk when I get back, but it'll be good to...clear my head, give everyone some space."

"I should be the one to go," Felicity protests. "This is my fault, I should - Oliver, I never meant to do this, you have to believe me, I never meant for this to mess everything up - "

"It's not your fault, shh. It's not your fault." Oliver lifts his other arm, and they fall into an embrace. Oliver closes his eyes and lets it happen; he'll want to remember this. It'll stay with him for a long time, probably, the way she smells, the way she feels. 

"I'm so," Felicity starts, pausing and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, like she's nuzzling in. Her entire body is trembling, like she's cold, and Oliver holds her a little tighter, thinking of how he'd done the same for Sara last night, as she shook her way through a nightmare in the early hours before sunrise. "God. I don't want to say I'm sorry because you told me not to but what else do I say? That's the big one, that was my whole plan for this conversation and you just tanked it, but Oliver, I am, I _am_ sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry! But I never meant to hurt you, that's the _last_ thing I ever wanted, and I'm just…"

Oliver shushes her again, and she trails off into silence, crying quietly into his shirt. He doesn't know what else to do, or what else he can do, and when she's calm enough to listen, he starts to talk, because he has to at least say this. 

"You are my dearest friend in the world," he says, dragging the words up from where they normally live, a secret hiding place deep down in his chest. "You and Sara are the reason I'm still here, do you understand that? Nothing else matters, it's all - it's fine. It's okay. We'll work it out."

He can still hear her sniffling a little bit, but she nods, clearly listening.

"We'll talk. I'll go away, and when I come back, we'll...work it out." He takes a deep breath. "Tell Sara all this for me, okay? She already knows, but." He shrugs. 

"You don't have to go away," Felicity says, small and quiet. 

"Yes, I do," Oliver says, and knows it's the truth, with a certainty that he very rarely has, these days. "I really do."

"I love you," Felicity says, almost tentatively, like she's not sure he wants to hear it. 

_I am my father's son,_ Oliver thinks. "That's why I have to go," he says, and squeezes her tight as the tears come back. They stand there for a long time, hugging and crying, not speaking. Oliver's not going to let go first. He doesn't think he could if he wanted to. 

His hands have stopped shaking.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one last caveat: i modeled the conversations with meridian after conversations with my own counselor. i have no idea if this is representative of therapy as a whole, or how productive my experience actually was, so don't like, take this as gospel or anything. 
> 
> content warnings: mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation

The island isn't included on most typical maps; Oliver's checked. It's a habit by now to lean in and squint at the coast of China whenever he sees one, and it's hardly ever there - not even the really detailed ones, like the relief map on the wall of the conference room at QC. Not exactly a surprise for a tiny piece of land, in a sea everybody always mixes up the name of, that for about twenty years between 1950 and 1970 didn't even officially exist. Oliver's still not sure what it is exactly that the Chinese were doing there, but they definitely did a lot of blood tests at that hospital in Hong Kong that he tries hard not to think too closely about.

The only one he's ever found it on was the huge globe in his father's old study, the one Oliver and Thea used to play with sometimes when they were kids. He's still not sure that the tiny speck of land is supposed to represent _his_ island, specifically, but it's close enough to the general area that it's as good as it gets, probably. The globe belongs to Thea now, but she hasn't moved it from the place where it's always lived - under the great big window, where it blends into the tapestry curtains, in the perfect spot to catch the afternoon sun. 

One of Thea's Hello Kitty stickers is still stuck to Antarctica, worn with age but still stubbornly clinging to the tiny bumps of the glaciers. There are pinholes all over Europe and Asia from when Raisa would track Robert and Moira's travels with thumbtacks, an attempt to make a young Oliver and Thea feel included in the business trips they weren't allowed to join. There's an X in Sharpie to mark Starling City, and a big frowny face over New York, some joke that Oliver doesn't remember. It's a time capsule of Oliver's childhood; the whole study is like that. It's the only room in the house that escaped the remodel.

There's a headstone for Robert in the garden. There was one for Oliver, too, right next to it, that disappeared a few days after his return; Oliver only saw it once, and apparently it disturbed his mother enough to see him staring at it that she'd had it removed that very day. Nobody's asked him about his dad's, and Oliver hasn't volunteered. He supposes they all assume that Robert went down with the ship, and he's not eager to correct them. What would he say, anyway? How could he say it out loud? Why should he even try? What good would it do for them to know?

If it's not on the map, then was it real? If the crashed plane they lived in wasn't on any official manifest, did it really happen? If Robert's body lies beneath the sand of an island that doesn't exist, then is he really dead? Or just gone? Vanished into a pocket universe, like Oliver and Sara did, to return again someday, dirty and tired but alive and smiling? How easy it must be for them to ignore the parts they don't see, to buy into the fairytale that the tabloids tell: the tragic lovers, miraculously returned from the dead. As if they were just on pause for five years, trapped in a glass coffin until a handsome prince in a fishing boat came along to wake them up. It's not their fault for not knowing, of course - how could they? But it burns all the same.

There's a certain comfort in ignorance that Oliver wishes he could have; sometimes he'd give anything for the ability to carve the things that hurt him right out of his brain. He knows it tore them all apart, not knowing what had happened to them, but he can't imagine that it was worse than having to actually live it - and Oliver just can't find it in himself to have sympathy for their pain when he can barely keep his head above the waterline of his own. Maybe that's selfish, maybe that means he's not any better of a person now than he was back then. But maybe he doesn't care. 

Some people have said to him that a trial like theirs is what makes them strong: that surviving tragedy and death and danger makes a person tough, solidifies their character, teaches them about what life is made of, what their own heart is made of. Maybe that's true for some, but not always: in Oliver's experience, pain doesn't make you grow - it just makes you hurt. Teaches you to flinch, to expect the worst, to turn your head so the blow lands where you're used to being hit. And worst of all: it makes you miss it when it's gone, because at least when you were being beaten you knew what to expect.

But maybe he's just doing it wrong. He's not very good at this sort of thing.

 

 

Oliver leaves a message for the Diggles, and texts Roy since Thea still isn't picking up. Raisa helps him pack, her frown carved deep into her face. She doesn't say that she's worried out loud, but the hug she gives him in the foyer is clear enough. 

Walter's car pulls up right behind Oliver's empty one, and he realizes with a start that it's almost dinnertime. It's strange that his mother still isn't home; she can't have had that much to do at the office today, not on a Saturday. Out with friends, maybe. Or errands. He doesn't really care.

"Oliver," Walter greets, still dressed for work. He waves his driver off with an elegant confidence that Oliver remembers trying to emulate, when he was young. He still does, sometimes. "Going somewhere?"

 _Obviously,_ Oliver wants to say, shutting the trunk against his suitcase. "The Estes Park house," he says. 

"Just for the weekend?"

Oliver shrugs. He hadn't given it much thought. "Maybe longer."

Walter gives him a long, thoughtful look. "Well, you certainly have enough vacation time built up. Poor Harold Beutler might actually weep for joy; apparently you've been making him look bad."

Oliver hadn't even thought about work at all, which is a pretty accurate measure of how much he actually cares about his job. "I'll, uh, give Margery a call first thing in the morning, I promise. Nathaniel can handle any urgent issues while I'm away, and - "

"Oh no, please, don't worry about it." Walter gives another one of those elegant waves, as if shooing away Oliver's concerns. "I'll take care of it. You're long past due some time off, Oliver - in fact, I'm glad for you. The Estes house is quite romantic, too. Is this the mysterious birthday gift for Sara, perhaps?"

Oliver's back tenses up. "No. No, she's staying here."

"Ah. Well, some solitude is healthy for a man your age. Clears the mind," Walter says tactfully. Oliver releases a breath of relief, one he hadn't realized he'd been holding back. "Is there anything I can do for you? You are taking the jet, aren't you?"

"No, I've got a plane ticket. It's fine," Oliver says, heading him off at the pass. He's got no illusions about his position at QC and why people put up with his frankly mediocre job performance, but taking the company jet is still one of those boundaries he doesn't want to push. "It's already done, Walter. I appreciate the offer, though."

"Of course." Walter is the only person Oliver knows that manages to act like he knows everything without also being smug, something not even Moira can pull off. It's one of the reasons he's so likeable, even when he uses it against Oliver. Maybe especially then. "You haven't spoken to your mother, I assume? She's been at the spa all day. No phones allowed."

"No, I haven't." Oliver wilts a little, beneath his gaze. "Raisa will speak with her."

"Perhaps if you gave Dr. Meridian a call, on your way to the airport," Walter offers. "You know how your mother worries. If I can tell her something like that, it'll make her feel much better."

"Yes," Oliver says reluctantly. "Yes, I'll call."

"Good," Walter says, smiling in satisfaction, as if he had any reason at all to doubt that he would be obeyed. "Well, I'll let you get on with it then. Have a safe trip, son."

Oliver leans into the hand Walter rests on his shoulder, surprised to find himself wishing for a hug instead. "Thank you, Walter."

"You're very welcome." Walter squeezes once, then pulls away without so much as a second glance. That stiff upper lip, maybe, or perhaps just his personality - Oliver's never been able to tell.

"Walter." Oliver watches as he stops on the doorstep, his hand stalled on the doorknob. "Will you...Thea was upset, last night. I haven't been able to reach her. Will you look in on her? She might need someone to talk to."

The line of Walter's shoulders dips, and his expression cracks into something a little less severe, and suddenly Oliver is looking at the man he remembers from his childhood: tall, imposing and serious, but always quick to smile, who kept Hershey Kisses in his jacket pockets for Thea, who gave Oliver advice about colleges. He hasn't seen this man in years, Oliver realizes suddenly. He was starting to think he'd made him up. 

"Of course," Walter says. "I always do."

Oliver knows that. But it feels too important not to say. "Thanks."

"You will...call, when you get there?" For the first time, Walter seems uncertain. "To let us know you made it safely?"

"Sure," Oliver says, and leans back against the car, the screws in his chest loosening ever so slightly. "It might be late, though."

"Oh, trust me, son," Walter implores kindly, "we'll be up."

 

 

Meridian had been surprised enough to let it bleed through in her voice, which means he'd probably thrown her for a real loop. They've been making progress lately - or at least, she thinks they've been making progress, because she'd told him as much during their last session. "I want daily phone calls," she says. "And I mean that, Oliver. This kind of impulsive action is very out of character, and I know you well enough to know that if you are having thoughts about harming yourself, you certainly wouldn't _admit_ it, so: daily phone calls."

"I'm not going to harm myself," Oliver said, because he knows that much, at least. "I just need some time alone."

"Did something happen with Sara?" Meridian asked, infuriatingly perceptive. "Did you have a fight?"

Oliver hung up on her. He'll pay for that later.

The house is situated in the depths of the national park, modest by Queen family standards, but it's always been Oliver's favorite. It's small, and quite old, but the view from the deck is breathtaking, and there's almost five acres of empty land to make you feel alone. He used to come here when he was in college, to throw parties for his friends - bonfires surrounded by mountains, keg parties on the top of the world. He'd even brought Sara here once, when Laurel was away at school (which was where Sara and Oliver were both supposed to be at the time, too). It was just for one night, and they had a good excuse and separate beds, so if anyone had found out it would've been a little inappropriate, maybe, but not scandalous, but...that hardly mattered. They were both already committed to it - already unfaithful in their hearts, if not their actions. It was wrong, but Oliver's too old now to pretend that wasn't part of the appeal.

He sleeps the first night away like he's sleeping off a high - dark, heavy sleep that leaves him slowly and reluctantly in the morning, fighting to pull him back down even as he struggles to free himself. He makes and drinks an entire pot of coffee, and as soon as the sun has cleared the horizon, his sister is calling. It's not as if he didn't expect it, but he is somewhat surprised she's awake this early. Still - he answers.

"What the fuck, Ollie," is Thea's greeting. It's a video call, and for some reason when Oliver answered it on his phone it transferred immediately to the big screen television above the fireplace, and her face looms over the entire living room like a ponytailed, mascara-smudged Wizard of Oz. "Since when do you just take off without telling anyone? Do you even have your meds with you? Did you quit your job or - just - what the fuck?"

"Thea," Oliver greets, cautiously moving in front of the TV. Her eyes track his movement, so it appears that the video feed goes both ways, which could either be a pro or a con, depending on how this conversation goes. He can't see a webcam, though - what kind of television has a webcam? Weird. "Yes, I'm in Estes. How are you doing, are you feeling better?"

"You told Walter you'd call and you didn't," Thea accuses, ignoring his question entirely. She's at Roy's apartment - Oliver recognizes the couch she's sitting on - and she looks exhausted. There are deep circles beneath her eyes, and leftover eyeliner is streaked across her cheekbones, like she's been rubbing her eyes. He wonders if she's even been to bed yet. "Mom's on the phone with your therapist right now, and nobody can get ahold of Sara. What the fuck is going on?"

"Don't call Sara," Oliver says, suddenly irritated. "Seriously - leave her alone. Tell Mom."

"Why? What happened?" Thea frowns, looking deeply unhappy. 

"We broke up," Oliver says, which is only half of the answer, but it's all anyone needs to know. "I'm fine. Okay? I'm fine, tell everyone I'm fine. I just needed some space."

"Jesus Christ, you _broke up?_ I didn't know you guys could even _do_ that," Thea says, the words spilling out quick and worried. "What the hell _happened?_ "

It's a fair question, but not one Oliver is prepared to answer, and suddenly Oliver is ferociously angry: he's tired of this, he's tired of being treated like an invalid, he's tired of not being trusted with his own well-being, and he's tired of being tired. He's tired of himself, he's tired of being fucked up. He's tired and angry and what the fuck is so complicated about "I need some time alone?" What about that is abnormal enough to put his entire family on suicide watch? Is he or is he not a grown man, or do they still think of him as the nineteen-year-old idiot who got on that goddamn boat?

He's not sure he wants an answer to that last question. 

"We _broke up,_ " Oliver snaps, his temper flying out of his grasp like a frayed rope in the wind. "Did I stutter?"

"Jesus," Thea says, clearly taken aback. "No, asshole, you didn't. But considering that three days ago you were picking out fucking china patterns, I think I have a good reason to ask."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Fine," Thea snaps, "then that's all you have to say. Don't bite _my_ head off because _you_ got dumped."

"You're the one who called me! I told Walter where I was going, I left messages for everyone, I even called my therapist - what did I forget, my permission slip?"

"You had a panic attack, Ollie!" Thea cries, trembling with anger. "You had a panic attack and then you broke up with your long-term girlfriend - who you've never even _fought_ with as far as we know! - and then you run off to the goddamn mountains out of _nowhere_ , so don't act like we don't have a right to be a little bit fucking concerned!"

"Whatever," Oliver spits, fumbling with his phone. "How the hell do you - "

"What are you _doing?_ "

"I'm trying to figure out how to hang up on you!" Oliver throws his cell at the couch in frustration. "Oh my God, _fuck_ that thing!"

Thea stares at him for an incredulous second and then bursts into laughter. "Ollie, oh my God. It's the little red button, you freak."

Oliver stares at her, his hands on his hips, scowling. Thea just laughs harder, with a bit of a hysterical tinge. "Okay. Yeah, it's funny. Oliver hates technology."

"I'm on the smart TV, aren't I?" Thea pauses to giggle again, rubbing her fingers harshly over her eyes. "Jeez, you haven't even been up there since you got back. Ollie, the whole house is all wired up now, Mom did it like three years ago. The lights, the thermostat, TV, stereo, everything's automated. It's a goddamn robot house."

Oliver looks around dumbly. It looks the same to him. But he hasn't needed to turn anything on yet - except the coffee maker, anyway, and that hadn't seemed at all robotic. "Automated?"

Thea laughs again, a much sadder sound, now. "Yeah. There's like an app on your phone you have to download that controls everything. You can ask Walter, he keeps the manuals for all that kind of stuff in a file somewhere."

"Jesus Christ." A robot house. Oliver sits down heavily; at least the couch is still operated by hand. "You're telling me the entire house is a smartphone?"

"Yeah. Even the fridge. It gives you recipes." Thea wipes at her eyes again, and the picture stutters as she moves the camera. Oliver watches her take one deep breath, then another, and finds himself breathing along with her, his anger fading away as quickly as it'd erupted. "Sorry I yelled."

"Me too."

"You look like shit, bro."

"I feel like shit." Oliver rubs his neck, the consequences of a night on the couch making themselves known. His knee is throbbing, reminding him that he hasn't taken his pills yet. "I didn't mean to scare you, honestly, I just…you know."

"Yeah." Thea shrugs, glancing down, looking almost bashful. "You scared the hell out of me the other night - at the party. I know I didn't handle it well - "

"You did fine."

"I really didn't," Thea says wryly. "It's okay. I'm gonna work on it for next time - Roy bought me a book."

"A book," Oliver says.

"Yeah," Thea says evenly, "it's called 'Getting Over Yourself For Dummies.'"

Oliver can't help himself; he laughs. "Oh, Thea."

"Okay, okay, I lied - he didn't actually buy the book. But he showed it to me on his phone. I'm totally gonna read it."

"I'll take a shot after you're done."

"Might as well make it a family thing, God knows Mom needs it," Thea replies, wiping at her eyes again. Oliver squints at the TV, and realizes she's crying a little - the quiet, subtle sort of tears that she used to shed as a little girl, when their parents would fight. His chest aches fiercely, but if she didn't want him to mention it then, she probably doesn't want him to now, either. "Do you want me to come up? Roy can handle the club for a few days. We could hang out, watch movies, whatever. I'll even do nature stuff with you if you want."

"It's fine, Thea."

"Is that your polite way of saying I don't have to go to the trouble, or your polite way of saying you don't want me to come?"

"The second one," Oliver tells her bluntly, smiling wryly. Thea smiles back, genuinely. "I really am okay. I just need some space."

"Okay. But if you change your mind," Thea offers, and trails off into fragile silence. Oliver holds her gaze silently, unsure of what to say, but after only a few seconds of eye contact her smile starts to wobble, and she looks away, tears spilling over her eyelashes. Oliver feels irrationally guilty as he watches her rub at her face, as if he'd caused her sadness just by looking at her - or by existing in the flawed state that he's in, maybe, and his inability to pull himself back to the healthy place where she wants him to be. 

"I'm sorry," he says helplessly, but Thea shakes her head in the negative before he's even finish speaking. 

"I don't know how to say it so that you get it," she says. "I don't care. I don't care! All I care about is you, you understand? You can yell and scream and act like the biggest asshole in the world and it won't change the fact that I'm your sister and I love you and I want you to be okay."

"I am the biggest asshole in the world sometimes," Oliver says. 

"No," Thea says flatly, "Dad held that title. And you stopped trying to take it from him years ago."

Oliver looks down at the carpet, the weight of that sentence falling heavily onto his shoulders. 

"Just stop apologizing for being fucked up, okay? Stop thinking about that. Apologize for like, the things you do wrong, but don't apologize for the way you _feel_ , Ollie. I never do."

Well, Oliver's been trying. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds. "You know, I've always admired that about you."

"Thank you," Thea says, and laughs shortly, a burst of half-hearted humor. "Maybe I should come to therapy with you. I can teach you how to do that, and you can teach me how to be more supportive."

"You're supportive," Oliver says. "You're being supportive right now - look at this. I'm getting therapy from a TV."

"The Thea Channel," she says, and laughs again. "You're a dork."

"I know," Oliver says somberly. "I love you, Thea. More than anything."

"I love you, too," Thea replies, wiping at her eyes again and smearing her eyeliner into an even bigger disaster. "More than anything, too. More than Roy. _Definitely_ more than Mom. God, that sounds bad."

"No, I know what you mean," Oliver says, laughing. "She's so - "

"Yeah." Thea laughs along with him, the kind of laughter they've shared countless times over the years - the kind without much actual humor in it at all. "Listen, I'll try to keep her off your back. But you should call her or something. I won't tell anyone about Sara, though. That'll just make them more worried."

"Thanks." Oliver rubs at his neck again. "I'll tell you about it when I get home, I promise. I just need some time to breathe."

"I get it," she says. And usually when people say that, it means they obviously don't, but Thea really does. She never says anything she doesn't mean, like that. It's another thing Oliver's always admired about her. "Be safe."

"Okay," Oliver replies. "Don't drive my motorcycle."

Thea's face transforms into an unconvincing veneer of innocence. "What? I don't even know how to drive that thing. Motorcycles are dumb."

"Uh huh," Oliver says. 

 

 

"Your father was a narcissistic alcoholic," Meridian says. "He was unpredictable; you said yourself that he would have violent mood swings. He would criticize you one day and then praise you for the same exact thing the next. You emulated his behavior in your youth because you were subconsciously seeking his approval, and since you were never sure what he wanted from you, the only way you could do that was by modeling your behavior after his. But despite your love for him, he was also a reprehensible person in your eyes - he cheated on your mother constantly, had multiple issues with drugs and alcohol, and his business practices were openly corrupt. You became like him, because you thought that's what he wanted from you, but you hated the man you were becoming, so you fell into the same bad habits that he had - the drinking, the partying, the mood swings. Even today, you still struggle with your guilt and conflict about the contradicting impulses you have to please your father and to be a good person - even though you don't drink or do drugs anymore, that destructive behavior comes out in other ways, ways that were shaped by the trauma you experienced on the island. Identifying and acknowledging all this is the first step to moving past it, Oliver. Your father is dead - you don't have to carry his burdens anymore.

"You feel responsible for everything and everyone around you; this is a very common behavior in adult children of alcoholics. You have an almost crippling fear of intimacy with anyone but Sara - and your intimacy with her is largely one of circumstance and familiarity whether you admit it or not. You have a need to be in control in every situation - both control of yourself, and your surroundings - a reaction to both your volatile childhood and to the island, where you were in control of nothing. None of these things are inherently bad for you, Oliver. They make you the person that you are, and you are, in spite of everything, an interesting, dynamic, good-hearted man - truly. But they hold you back in other ways sometimes, and I want to help you start to recognize them in your own actions, because if you continue to float through life without examining it, you will continue to have the same difficulties, over and over again. You say you feel disconnected from the world, that you have trouble dealing with everyday situations. You don't feel connected to people - even your family. You feel an intense sadness that never goes away, and you fall into severe depressive episodes. You are very, very harsh on yourself. You routinely display many of the warning signs of suicidal thoughts that we're taught to look for, Oliver. You say you don't think about that specifically, and I believe you, but the fact remains that I cannot ignore it. 

"You never miss our sessions. I know you're committed to therapy, and that's good. I'm not trying to scold you, and I hope you don't take this as such; I'm trying to give you a 'brutally honest answer' to your question, as you put it. My professional opinion? Okay. My professional opinion is that you're a good man who has been through a lot, and the fact that you want so badly to work through all this is a very good sign. I want to help you, and I think you can get better. Yes, you absolutely can get better. The pain will never completely go away and I think you already know that. But you can adapt to it, you _can_ live a fulfilling, satisfying life. You can be a son and a brother, and a husband and father someday maybe, if that's what you want. There's nothing stopping you. You are capable of being and doing anything you want. The pain does not define you, and it doesn't have to control you, either. You are more than what happened to you. You are more than your pain.

"Yes, I absolutely am worried that you'll harm yourself, and I wish you would agree to allow your sister to come up there and stay with you. But you say you need space, and I respect that, and these phone calls of ours I think are a good compromise. Are they helping you? That's good. I'm relieved to hear that. 

"I think you should call Sara, and Felicity too, yes. You're making a lot of assumptions here, Oliver, ones that I feel might be inaccurate. You say you're not angry at them for cheating on you - no, no, I believe you. You love both of them deeply, I know that. I think you're hurt, not angry. I think...well, Oliver, I think that you're being unfair with yourself again. If you really, really think about it, if you're being as honest with yourself as possible, is it really true that you always expected them to choose each other over you? Do you really think so badly of yourself that you don't expect their loyalty? Or are you telling yourself that because you feel guilty? No, just think about it. We don't have to talk about this anymore if you don't want to. Of course not. 

"I don't think love works like that, Oliver. Sara may not have chosen to get stuck on that island with you, but you didn't choose it either. And she could have left you when you got back. She could've left when you were still there, for that matter - your romantic relationship with her wasn't a requirement for survival. She wanted to stay with you, she wanted to love you. Felicity chose that too - the Diggles chose it, your sister chooses it, your mother and stepfather. Nothing can force someone to love someone else, not even if they're your family - not all families love each other, Oliver! Trust me. You're not _trapping_ them. This is what I believe love is, and - of course, you can disagree. There's no therapist handbook on this sort of thing. But I've always thought that real love, the adult, mature kind of love, is just choosing to stay with someone, over and over again. That's how I love my husband: I make the choice, every day, to care about him. I don't have to, and he doesn't make it easy sometimes, but I still do it, because I want to.

"It's alright to feel conflicted. Guilty, too - those are normal. It's a complex situation. I'm going to send you some information, and I want you to read it, okay? Your relationship with both of them can be whatever you want, so long as you discuss it with them and everyone is okay with it. Just keep an open mind and remind yourself that you _don't know_ what they're thinking. Just because you feel like they'd be better off without you doesn't mean that they agree.

"That's very mature of you to admit. No, I don't think that's mean. It's how you feel. Mean would be _saying_ that to her. Which I don't think you will. I hope you know you can always say these things to me, and - maybe that will help, to vent your anger here, so that it doesn't come out accidentally in other ways. Yeah? Let's make a deal, then. You tell me your ugly thoughts, and I can forgive you for having them, if you feel like you need someone to forgive you. 

"What do _you_ think your father would say? I can't tell you, I never met him. I only know what you've told me. So you tell me, Oliver: would he approve of who you've become? And also: does it matter to you anymore? If he were alive right now, and he looked at your life and your choices and told you that he disapproved of all of them, would it hurt you, or make you proud? It's okay if the answer is 'both.' 

"Really? Say that again. It felt good, didn't it?

"Well, I like who you are, too. I'm really happy you feel like that, Oliver. That's an incredible thing, you know. It really is."

 

 

Sara calls on Oliver's eighth day in Colorado, which he's been more or less expecting. Meridian is still insisting he should make the first move, but he knows Sara better than that. 

He's in a bookstore when the call comes in, and he considers letting it go to voicemail but that will send her a message that he doesn't intend, so he abandons the book he's looking at and steps outside.

"Hi," she says, when he picks up. 

"Hi." It's this more than anything else that feels strange; they don't usually do the whole greeting thing on the phone. If things were normal, she would have just started talking. 

"So," Sara says after a moment of silence, and she sounds strange, stilted. Oliver takes in a slow breath, his chest aching strangely. "How are you?"

Oliver snorts. "I'm fine, how are you?"

She laughs. "Sorry. This is weird. I'm making it weird, aren't I?"

"A little."

"Well, you know how I am about fucking things up. It's like a habit of mine."

"Don't say that." Oliver crosses over to a bench so he can sit down and give his knee a rest; the week and a half without his pain medication has been taking its toll. There's a stream right behind him and it's high and loud today from the rain last night, but the sound is actually comforting, in a weird way. He never thought he'd feel that way about water again. "How are you really?"

"I'm okay. I've been, uh. I'm staying with Laurel."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Sara sighs audibly. "It's, you know, it's going okay. We've been talking and stuff."

"That's good," Oliver says, meaning it. "Somewhat overdue."

"I know." She pauses. "She thinks you and I are broken up, which has been making it easier."

Oliver doesn't know what to say to that. "I can see how that would help, yeah."

There's a long, loaded pause, and Sara sighs again, a frustrated noise that crackles over the line. "Please don't make me say it."

Oliver rubs the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Okay," Sara says thinly. "Do you want - should I apologize?"

"No." Oliver pauses. "I told Felicity to tell you - "

"You told Felicity what, Ollie? Because she came back that day in hysterics, like sobbing all over me and shit, and said you were leaving town, and then your family starts calling me all freaked out and your fucking _therapist_ even leaves me this weird voicemail about - "

"She's your therapist too, remember? Technically," Oliver interjects.

Sara scoffs. "Yeah right. I only went like, twice. I thought you'd gotten the clue by now."

Oliver ducks his head, staring at the sidewalk. All around him, families and couples are walking past, weaving in and out of the shops, talking and laughing and living normal lives. Oliver feels like a black hole in the middle of their happiness, a smear of dirt on an otherwise squeaky clean window. "I don't - I don't know what you want me to say."

"Well, I don't know what the hell _I_ should say either," Sara replies, voice cracking painfully in the middle. "I - Ollie. Jesus. I'm sorry."

"I don't need you to apologize. There's nothing to be sorry about."

"Well, shit, okay," Sara chokes out, "I mean. I know that. I know we had this like - understanding or whatever, but - you're obviously upset. So I'm sorry for that. I'm really fucking sorry I hurt you. We hurt you. Whatever."

"Of course I'm upset, but it's not - this is what I told Felicity, okay? I just want you both to be happy."

"How the fuck are we supposed to be happy when you're not here?" Sara demands. "When you're hurt and alone and pulling some Unabomber act in the mountains? Huh? Tell me that."

Oliver finds himself speechless, staring blankly at his shoes, his mind an aching blank. 

"I just," Sara says, breaking off into another wordless sound of frustrated pain. "God. Okay, so we talked about it _once_ , right? We gave each other the out or whatever, where if we wanted to be with someone else we could, and we wouldn't have to make a big deal about it, but that was like - over a year ago. Right after we got back, when we were in the hospital, it's not - it's different now. It's been me and you for so long, and I - I should've talked to you first. I meant to, but - I was really upset and it just happened, and I was _going_ to talk to you but you left, and - "

"It's okay," Oliver says numbly. His chest hurts so much it's hard to breathe. "You were upset, it's okay, I get it - "

"Yeah, but you shouldn't! You shouldn't get it. I owed you better. I fucked it up, like I always do." He can tell that she's crying, and can almost picture it. Sitting in Laurel and Tommy's living room in her sweats, wiping away angry tears and bouncing her leg against the coffee table. "We did this all wrong, we really did." 

Oliver doesn't reply, and they sit there with that truth for a moment, listening to each other breathe. 

"You know I love you, right?"

"Yes," Oliver says. 

"Felicity loves you too. We both love you," Sara says, and Oliver has to close his eyes against the weight of that. "Tell me you're okay. Or - no, just tell me the truth. I've been so fucking worried."

"I'm," Oliver starts, and chokes on the lie he was about to say. "I'm."

"Oliver."

He takes a deep breath. "I'm sad. I'm really sad, Sara. It's like everything's hitting me all at once."

"Oh," Sara says thickly. 

"I want to see you," Oliver says, his voice cracking. "Both of you. I can't - I don't want to be alone anymore. I think...I hate being alone. I really do."

"You're not," Sara says desperately, and she's definitely crying now. Oliver hates himself for being relieved, a little, that she's this upset about him. "You've never been. Come back now, okay? Come back."

"I don't want to get in the way, though. That's important to me that you know that, that if you two want to be together then I don't want to be the thing that stops you."

"Shut up," Sara says fiercely. "Just stop. How could we be anything without you?"

Oliver goes speechless again, staring at his feet. 

"Come home," she demands. "We've got shit to talk about."

Maybe it is that easy. For the first time, Oliver dares to think it could be. 

"I'll get a flight tomorrow," he promises. "And I love you too."

"Yeah," Sara replies, still crying, "I know."

 

 

Oliver buried his father on the beach, and then Sara was there. He doesn't remember it very clearly; it's like looking through a pane of frosted glass, when he tries to think about it. He's pretty sure he hit her. She always told him he didn't, when he asked, but he was halfway delirious with pain and grief, and he's fairly sure he at least tried. 

"Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead," she said, forcibly leading him through the underbrush. She'd wound his arms around her waist and told him to hold on or else, and he'd obeyed mindlessly, not seeing or processing anything but the scrape of the leaves and branches on his bare ankles. "I saw the raft in the water when I made it to the beach, but it looked empty. Jesus, Ollie, who was that? In the - okay. Okay, never mind. We don't have to talk about it. Shit, you look horrible. Just keep walking - that's it. One foot at a time, you're okay."

He doesn't remember what he said back to her. Everything's in fragments, like pieces of a puzzle. There was the plane - she'd found it first, right away, she'd told him later. She'd managed to get to a large piece of metal to hang onto in the water - part of the ship's hull, probably - and ridden it all the way to land, beating Oliver's raft there by a full day. The first thing she did was find shelter, and the rusty old cans of beans and corn in the cargo bay that'd saved their lives in those first few weeks. 

"We have somewhere to sleep," she told him, ticking it all off on her hands. "We have a blanket, and these net things, too. We have the raft, so we can cut that up and use it if we need to. We have a fire. There's animals here, I've seen them, so we can kill them for food when the cans run out - we'll figure it out. We have _some_ medicine. We still have shoes and clothes. We're okay. We'll - they'll be looking for us, I'm sure. We just have to sit tight until they come. It'll be okay. We'll be okay."

"I saw you fall in the water," Oliver said. "It wasn't even falling, it was - it _took_ you. It just grabbed you and pulled you down, I tried to - I couldn't _reach_ you, Sara, God - "

"Yeah, that sucked," Sara said, and tucked into Oliver's side, pressing their foreheads together. "But I'm a good swimmer. I made it. We both did, we're alive, and we'll be okay."

"My dad," Oliver said, stammering the words into her hair, shaking violently beneath her hands, "my dad, he - "

She had to have noticed the blood spatter on his shirt. Oliver knows now that she'd thought he was injured, when she first saw him on the beach, that the reason she'd ran up to him and yelled like she did was because she was freaked out, because she thought the blood was his. 

He doesn't want to forget it, he wants to understand it - make some kind of sense of it, even though he knows logically that's futile. Bad things happen sometimes, for no reason at all, and trying to put a chaotic world in order is a merciless, thankless task. What he knows is that the boat sank. His father committed suicide right in front of him. The island was fifteen point three miles in circumference, and the plane was a World War II-era transport aircraft that crashed one point two miles inland sometime between 1948 and 1951. They lived there for four years, ten months, and three weeks. And if Sara hadn't found him, Oliver would've died on that beach. He wouldn't have even tried. 

It makes no sense. There was no purpose to it. No reason. It happened and it hurt and they'll spend the rest of their lives recovering, but Oliver is finally starting to realize that the relevant point is that they _have_ lives again. He never really...understood that, before. But he's getting there.

 

 

It's a little embarrassing, insisting for a week and a half that all he wanted was to be left alone, only to realize it was a lie. But Oliver's done way more embarrassing things than that, so he supposes it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Lyla picks him up on the airport, greeting him with a casual hug and smile, as if it's nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe it is ordinary. Oliver wouldn't know. 

"Check it out," she says, digging an envelope out of the glove compartment as they wait for a stoplight. "I had my first ultrasound this morning."

Oliver slides the picture out carefully, peering at the blurry image. "I'm not sure what I'm looking at exactly."

"Neither do I," Lyla says with a grin. She leans over, pointing to a greyish white blob. "That's it. Apparently. She circled it on the other copy, but John kept that one."

"Wow," Oliver says. "She's got your eyes."

"Shut up," Lyla says, laughing as she tears out through the intersection. "Idiot." Oliver grins back, satisfied. 

She takes him all the way back to the mansion, despite his protests that she doesn't need to drive all the way out there in the middle of the day. Her super secret government job comes with perks, apparently. 

"Listen, you're gonna come over for dinner this weekend," Lyla says, waylaying him with another hug as he digs his suitcase out of the pile of crap in her trunk. "Carly and AJ are coming, and Sin will come too when she hears you're back. We've all missed you."

"Yes, ma'am," Oliver says, squeezing her shoulder as she pulls away. "I look forward to it."

"You can bring Sara and Felicity. Or - just Sara. Or not. If you want. Up to you." Lyla smiles ruefully, like she knows she just handled that in the most awkward way possible. "Wow, okay, well - you know what I mean. Shit."

Oliver laughs. "Yeah."

"So I'll see you then, either way," she finishes. "Are you coming back to yoga too?"

"I hope so," Oliver says genuinely, and Lyla nods in happy approval. "Listen, thanks for the ride. Tell Digg I said hi."

"Tell him yourself, he's planning on kidnapping you for lunch tomorrow," Lyla says. Oliver can't stop himself from smiling, wide and silly, a fragile, blooming sort of happiness that feels strange after almost two weeks of sullen hurt and anger. "Take care of yourself."

"You too," Oliver says, and waves as she drives away. She hits the corner way too fast, tires screeching, and he laughs as the security guards fall all over themselves trying to get the gate open. 

He's already spoken to Thea, who is wedding-shopping all day with her friends, and Walter welcomed him back with a text that came just minutes after his plane landed - which Oliver knows was deliberate, Walter's way of letting him know he's being looked after. All that's left is Moira, whom he knows deserves a conversation. She's in the living room when he walks inside, and for a moment he just stands in the foyer, watching her read the paper through the open doorway, frozen in a moment of trepidation. 

His mother is one of the most intimidating people he knows, for a lot of reasons. He knows she loves him, but - like Thea said, it's not always easy to love her back. Sometimes Oliver feels guilty, but most of the time it just makes him sad. 

"Oliver." She rises the moment he enters the room, and for a moment Oliver can see the weight of stress and worry on her face. It melts away the second he notices it, but the fact that he noticed it at all means something. "Welcome home, sweetheart. How was your flight?"

"It was fine." Oliver accepts her hug and kisses her cheek gently. She smells like she always does - she's been using the same perfume and hair products for Oliver's entire life, and every time he's close to her, he remembers what it was like to sit in her lap when he was little, on those rare occasions when she'd want him close. It had always felt like such a privilege, to be allowed to be around her. "The house was fine too, before you ask. I can't believe you bought an SUV, though."

"I know, I know," Moira says, gesturing him down onto the couch gracefully. "I surprised everybody. I suppose that's why I did it."

"Well, it's a nice car," Oliver says. He glances at the coffee table, and the pile of paperwork spread out on it. "Are you in the middle of something?"

"No, no. Just some paperwork. I wasn't really doing much other than staring at it, anyway." Moira shakes her head regally. "You must be hungry - Raisa is still here, she can make you something. Or some tea, perhaps?"

"No, I don't want anything."

"Alright." Moira nods, folding her hands together on her lap carefully. There's a bit of a stilted silence. "Your friend Lyla gave you a ride?" Oliver nods. "That was nice of her."

"Mom." Oliver reaches out and takes her hand. He can feel her shiver at the contact. "I'm sorry I scared you."

"Well." Moira looks down at the ground momentarily, gathering her suddenly shaken composure. "Thank you for that. I was worried."

"Sara and I had some trouble. You probably know that, but...I should have talked to you first, instead of just disappearing. But I was upset, and I wasn't thinking. I won't do it again."

Moira nods again, her eyes a little glassy with unshed tears. She won't let them fall, though. She never does. "I spoke with Dr. Meridian a few times. She was able to reassure me - she couldn't tell me anything specific, of course. She said you were okay, though."

"I was."

"Good. That's good." Moira squeezes his hand, looks up at him sharply when he squeezes back. "Thank you for apologizing. It's not necessary, but I appreciate it."

"You're welcome." Oliver takes a chance and squeezes her hand again, and she smiles a little, shoulders hitching. "I should go unpack. Will you be around for dinner?"

"Yes. Raisa's making flank steak."

"Okay," Oliver says, standing up. She stands with him, and he acts on the impulse to hug her again, before he loses his nerve. She gasps a little, but hugs him back, and when he pulls away she's looking at him sharply again, clearly taken aback. 

It's stupid that it's never occurred to him that she might be intimidated by him, too. Oliver smiles at her gently; it's sad, and stupid, but it's his. His family, his life. A good life, all in all. A lucky life. 

"I love you, Mom," he tells her, "I don't say that enough."

"Oh, honey," Moira replies, blinking rapidly, her face tender. "I love you too. Very much. You don't have to say it for me to know."

Oliver smiles, still squeezing her hands. "It's good to be back, you know?"

"Yes," Moira says, choking up a little. He squeezes harder, and she smiles, small and tentative, but genuine. "Yes, it's good to have you home."

 

 

Sara's back to texting, which is her preferred method of phone communication, and Oliver is treated to an almost hourly update of her thoughts and movements. It's comforting, and more welcome than she'll ever know. He reads all of them carefully; she and Laurel are doing really well, finally talking again, circling the runway towards actual friendship. Tommy says hi. She's thinking about looking for a job, maybe. She wants to take him to this cool bar she found, when he has time. He tells her: _maybe this weekend. And only if you DD._

Work is waiting, and Oliver is a little surprised to find that he's missed it - a little. He goes out with Thea and Roy on the second night, burgers and beer at a cheesy themed restaurant that Roy loves and Thea pretends not to hate, and dinner at the Diggles' on Friday. Sin is there, and talks Oliver's ear off all night about her new girlfriend, whose name is Ellie and is super mega hot. After seeing the picture Sin has of her in her phone, Oliver has to agree. 

On Sunday, Oliver wakes up at three thirty in the morning, which is when he'd usually get up for yoga. He lies in bed for a few minutes, contemplating his options, and finally gets sick of himself and gets up to shower. 

He hasn't heard from Felicity, is the thing. It's hard not to take it as a signal. 

The worst that will happen is that it'll be awkward, he tells himself, as he navigates through Starling's empty streets. He's on his motorcycle, since Sara still has the car, and by the time he gets to the studio he's nearly frozen solid. He forgot his gym bag too, he realizes - but it's not like he has work later. And Digg keeps an extra pair of sweats in his. 

He's a few minutes late, so everyone is already changed and stretching when he walks in. The tiny bell on the door jingles and it's almost comical, the way they all look up at once and freeze when they see him. 

"Um," Oliver says, "hi."

Felicity's there, in her spot up at the front, with her matching mat and stretchy top. Oliver can't help but stare at her; he feels like he hasn't seen her in months. 

"Hi," Sin parrots, looking up from a complicated stretch and wobbling, "shit." She falls over, and Lyla bursts out laughing, and the strange silence of the moment is gone. 

"Welcome back," says Digg, and Oliver steps fully into the studio, dropping his keys on the counter next to Sin's purse. Felicity swallows, squares her shoulders, and smiles at him tentatively. Oliver smiles back firmly. "Did you come straight from a wind tunnel, man?"

"Had to take the bike," Oliver explains. He looks around; Sara's not here. He should've figured - she always did rely on him to get her up early enough. "Could I borrow a pair of sweats?"

"Sure," Digg says, rising easily out of his stretch and crossing over to his bag. 

"You look frozen solid," Felicity says, maybe a little quieter than usual, but Oliver will take it. "You should drink some coffee first and warm up. I can make you some, actually - hold on - "

"No, please," Oliver says, and catches the pants Digg tosses his way. "I'll warm up as we go. It's been a few weeks; I've missed it."

"We're doing pregnant stuff," Sin says cheerfully, a sly note to her voice as she surveys the scene. "You know, cuz Lyla's all knocked up now."

"Is there a difference between regular yoga and pregnant yoga?" Oliver asks. 

"The term is _prenatal_ yoga, and kind of," Felicity supplies. She smiles at him again, more confidently this time. "We'll wait for you to change. We haven't really started yet, anyway."

"Thanks," Oliver says, heading for the bathroom. "But don't let me hold you up."

Lyla snorts. "Don't be stupid," she calls after him, and Oliver hides his pleased grin by shouldering his way through the door. 

Pregnant yoga seems to be the same as non-pregnant yoga, only slower - or maybe that's just Lyla's version of it. She complains the entire time that she's not even through the first trimester yet so quit coddling her and if they're all gonna be this overprotective the whole time she's gonna dump all of them and go stay with her brother until she pops this kid out (even though she hates his girlfriend). Then she'll call and let them know. Maybe.

"Would you shut your trap?" Digg finally says, "you're gonna pull a muscle, slinging all that bullshit around."

"That's it, you're fired," Lyla says. "Oliver, you're the father of my child now. How's your health insurance?"

"Excellent," Oliver tells her, and Sin snorts loudly, unsuccessfully muffling it in her shoulder.

"Just concentrate on your pregnant yoga," Digg says, and Felicity rolls her eyes dramatically and chimes in, "you're _all_ fired if you keep calling it 'pregnant yoga,' for pete's sake. Oliver, you're relaxing your shoulders too much again, keep 'em stiff!"

Oliver grins and leans into the stretch, the pain in his leg already a distant memory. It feels good. He's glad he came. 

Sin scampers off as soon as they're done like she always does, throwing a cheerful wave over her shoulder and then pedaling away eagerly on her bicycle. Oliver doesn't know how she manages to ride that thing all the way to her apartment after working an overnight shift and then an hour-long workout on top of that, but then again he's definitely not nineteen anymore, so.

Digg and Lyla chat for a while longer, but they've got a family thing today, so they leave fairly quickly too, after extracting a promise from Oliver that they'll see him in class on Tuesday, that is. 

Felicity clearly loses what little nerve she had as soon as they're gone, fluttering aimlessly around the studio and avoiding Oliver's gaze. He doesn't know what to do to make her feel better though, so he settles for small talk. 

"No I mean, it's not a big deal or anything," she says, "Marcia and Lisa Marie both dropped out about a month ago, so the class wasn't big enough to be worth the expense to the HR guys, I guess. And Mrs. Harlowe - I mean, Ms. Harlowe, sorry - she told me that if there's more interest later on down the line that I'd be the first call so it's not a big deal. Plus it frees up my afternoon so I can take on another class here, so that's cool."

"There was someone in your class named 'Lisa Marie?'"

"Yeah, she works in Finance. Financing? Something with money." Felicity tucks the last of her paperwork away, then looks around, visibly realizing that there's nothing left for her to do but talk to Oliver. "Have you, um, ever met her? Lisa Marie Hampton? Brown hair with blonde highlights, bright red glasses?"

"No," Oliver says, amused despite himself. "Doesn't ring a bell."

"Well, maybe you'll see her around the office or something," Felicity says, and then winces at herself. "Um."

"Felicity," Oliver says gently, and she actually takes a step backwards, eyes widening. "Can we talk?"

"Yes," she blurts, a little too loudly. "Yes, I mean. Not here. Because there's another class coming soon! But, um, I don't have anything until like two pm, so if you wanted, um - "

"Your place?" 

"Sara's there," Felicity blurts again, blushing. "She spent the night. She said you talked! I don't know - is that okay?"

"Yes," Oliver says, even more amused. "She told me. I mean - we've been texting, since I came back. It's fine."

"Okay," Felicity mutters, more to herself than to Oliver. "Okay. This is so weird, but okay."

Oliver grins at her, feeling oddly happy. "Would you like to take my bike?"

Felicity looks out the windows to the motorcycle, visible in the early morning light. "God, no."

"Are you sure?" he teases, and Felicity shoots him a dirty look. 

" _No,_ " she says. "I'm not eighteen anymore and Harleys are no longer sexy, just awkward and thirty-six times more likely to kill you. And yes, I looked that up."

"It's not a Harley," Oliver tells her. "It's a Ducati Diavel. 1198.4cc engine, 162 horsepower. 94 foot pounds of torque. A real beast."

"Sure, okay," Felicity says. "I drive a Honda. It's blue."

Oliver laughs. "Sounds great."

"Good gas mileage, it gets like 34 on the highway," Felicity says, and tosses him his keys. "You shouldn't leave your beast here though. The afternoon Sunday crowd around here is kind of rough. You know those yoga moms."

"Lead the way," Oliver says with a smile.

Felicity's townhome is as familiar as the mansion, and has the bonus of being way less intimidating. Oliver follows on his bike and guns the engine as he pulls into the driveway next to her very blue, sensible Honda, which gets a laugh at least. She seems less nervous here than she'd been before; maybe the time alone on the drive helped. 

Oliver waits patiently at her car door as she gathers together everything that she's scattered across the passenger seat during the drive, which is a habit of hers that he's always found endearing. It doesn't matter how long her commute is, every drive in any car is approached like a cross country road trip - makeup, supplies, music, snacks. One time she even made a special playlist just to drive down to the pizza place on the corner to pick up dinner. 

"Sara was asleep when I left, go figure," Felicity says, hauling her armful up the front steps, waving him away when he tries to dart in and take one of her bags. "Get away from me, I'm fine. Just open the door, it's unlocked."

"You leave your door unlocked?" Oliver asks, disapprovingly.

"This is Lamb Valley, who robs townhouses in Lamb Valley? Plus, Sara's here."

Oliver figures she's got a point there. 

There's music playing in the kitchen as they walk in, an older pop song that reminds Oliver of being seventeen. Back when he knew all the songs on the Top 40, and had opinions on them. "She must be awake then," Felicity says, sounding sort of nervous, and Oliver takes the opportunity to steal a couple of her bags. "Hey - "

"Go tell her I'm here," Oliver says, setting them down gently. Felicity rolls her eyes at him and throws her half down next to his. 

"No, we're doing this together," she says, and grabs his arm. Oliver follows along, guiltily relieved. He hadn't meant that as a test, but she'd passed it anyway. 

Sara's occupied with something on the stove when they walk in, but she turns at almost the exact second that Oliver steps over the threshold. Her hair is different, is Oliver's first thought - it's much shorter, just barely grazing her shoulders, and she's dyed it a few shades darker, with a reddish tinge to it that makes her look five years younger. How very like Sara to give him the minute, obsessive details of her dentist appointment and the bruise on her shin she got from Laurel and Tommy's dog and then just forget to mention she chopped off half of her hair. 

"Ollie," she says, reaching out and slapping the radio off with one hand. "You're here!"

Her smile is a burst of affection that Oliver hadn't realized he'd been missing, a shot of whiskey to warm him up on a cold night. He opens his arms for her on instinct, burying his face in her neck and thinking, _why did I ever think I could leave?_ "Your hair, Sara, you didn't tell me."

Sara hugs him tighter, laughing loudly into his shoulder. "I didn't think you'd care! Do you like it?"

"Yes," Oliver says truthfully. She looks beautiful all the time, but the new color suits her, he thinks. Or maybe it's her smile that makes it seem so. "Tired of being a blonde?"

"I'm still a blonde. I'm just a _strawberry_ blonde," Sara corrects, pulling back from the hug and clamping down on Oliver's arms as if to keep him from escaping. As if he'd want to. "Besides, people kept thinking Felicity and me were sisters when we'd go out, which was awkward."

"I'm sure you came up with some inventive ways to correct them on that assumption," Oliver says, not considering that it might be too soon to joke until he hears Felicity choke slightly, still standing unsurely in the doorway. "Oh, uh - "

"Don't embarrass her, Ollie," Sara chides, but laughs right after, her heart clearly not in it. "Felicity, you look like a bomb's about to go off. Relax, would you? Look, I made breakfast."

"You made soup," Felicity says, moving past them to peer into the pot on the stove. There's a hint of a blush at her cheekbones, but she seems to be determined to ignore it. "Soup is not breakfast."

"Well it's lunch for you, isn't it? There's enough for all three of us, if you're hungry, Ollie."

"I could eat," Oliver says, and Sara nods, like she approves. 

If it's weird to be here, Oliver doesn't notice. It feels familiar, actually, like this is the way it's been his entire life - in this small little house, drinking tomato soup from a mug and listening to them bicker about who should do the dishes. Like the dinners they'd have before, although - now that the context is different, Oliver realizes that there was always something off, there, some kind of tension that he'd just gotten used to. Now that it's gone, it feels like he's being rescued all over again. 

"Okay, fine, it's good," Felicity says grudgingly, hiding her smile in her soup. "I could get behind tomato soup for breakfast. You convinced me; happy?"

"Yes," Sara says, straightening up in her seat at the kitchen table. "Because I...guess what? _Made it from scratch._ "

"No shit?" Oliver blurts, and Sara laughs, hunching her shoulders up in delight. He takes another drink; now that he's paying attention, he recognizes the flavor. "This is Raisa's recipe!"

"I've been practicing," Sara says proudly. 

"You didn't tell me!" Felicity says. "Oh my God, go you! That's amazing, this is amazing - wait, how long would it have taken you to...oh my God, were you just _pretending_ to sleep this morning? _Sara_ \- !"

"I'll go to yoga on Tuesday, okay, I promise," Sara replies, consolingly. "I really was sleepy."

Felicity grumbles, her expression a strange amalgam of frustrated amusement. "Not sleepy enough to cook delicious soup apparently, oh my God, this is so good, I hate you. I can't even make scrambled eggs!"

Sara laughs again, leaning over into a precarious stretch to kiss Felicity's cheek. "You have other talents," she says, warm and a bit wicked, a tone that Oliver knows well. Felicity flushes pink, darting a look over at Oliver, who feels a precious kind of wonder as he watches them, or maybe awe, that he's allowed to be here in their private space, like he is. 

"Right, um," Felicity says, looking down at her hands. Sara looks up and catches Oliver's eye, and smiles, a little. 

"She's always been a good cook," Oliver offers, to rush them past the silence. "Even on the island. Much better than me; I'd always burn it."

"You were better at catching them, though," Sara says. She turns to Felicity. "The hogs we ate. I told you, remember?"

"Yeah," Felicity says, clearing her throat. "Not exactly kosher."

"It was either that or these birds, which were never worth the effort to catch," Sara explains. "We never tried the fish, because we were afraid they might be toxic, and we never figured out how to catch the ones in the ocean. We were working on a fishing raft though, when we were rescued. It looked pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself."

"Well, you did the majority of it," Oliver says. "I just carried stuff when you told me to, really."

"He was good at that," Sara tells Felicity, like it's an inside joke. Felicity just nods, looking fascinated. 

"She designed the whole thing - it was really impressive. God, that - the fishermen kept complimenting it. Remember? They wouldn't shut up about it on the whole ride back to the mainland, they were so charmed by it."

"Oh yeah," Sara says. "I forgot about that."

"The captain gave you his wife's shoes," Oliver says, caught up in the memory. For the first time, it feels easy to think about. "And he gave me his jacket. What was his name? I feel horrible that I don't remember."

"Zhao," Sara says. "He said 'call me Zhao.' I think it was his surname."

"I meant to thank him," Oliver says, "but I never did."

"I think your mom's lawyer gave him some money," Sara says. "I overheard some of the nurses talking."

Her Mandarin always was better than Oliver's. "That's good." He comes back to himself abruptly, looking over at Felicity. "Sorry."

"No, don't, I don't mind," Felicity says. "You guys never talk about this stuff. Not that I mind that either! I'm not like, I don't wanna be voyeuristic about it, I'm just interested, you know, because you never talk about it, but I definitely get why - "

"I told you you could ask me about it," Sara interrupts. "Anything you wanna know."

"Yeah, but I thought you were just saying that - anyway." Felicity shrugs. "Never mind."

"We probably should talk about it more," Oliver says, to both of them. "I think that's...that's part of the reason why it still gives us trouble. We don't talk about it."

Sara looks skeptical, but she doesn't disagree. "You sound like Laurel."

"Well, Laurel's pretty smart." 

Sara rolls her eyes. "I just don't see the point; we were both there."

"I wasn't," Felicity says, and Sara looks over at her sharply. Her expression softens in response, eyes growing sympathetic behind her glasses. "So tell me about it. Both of you can."

Oliver watches Sara squirm, clearly uncomfortable with the idea, but - if she really disliked the idea, she'd have left the room long before now, no matter what _other_ important conversation they'd originally sat down to have. "What do you want to know?"

"No, it doesn't work like that," Felicity says. "You can't just make it into an interview. Like if I ask 'what was it like?' You'll just say something like 'it sucked,' and then turn it into a joke. You can't keep doing that."

"I wouldn't, not with you," Sara insists stubbornly. "No, seriously, ask me. Go ahead. I'll give you a real answer."

Felicity gives her a narrow-eyed look, and then says, "okay, what was it like, then?" and folds her arms like she's expecting to be proven right. But Sara sits up straight, and looks over at Oliver with wide, freaked out eyes. 

"Lonely," he prompts, his heart beating fast, too fast, in his chest. Sara nods, and looks back over at Felicity, who's sitting up straight now, too. "But also, not. At the same time."

"Yeah." Sara clears her throat, and then, stronger, "it was like...everything we knew about life was suddenly wrong, and there was this whole new language we had to figure out. Like...we'd both been raised to be circles, let's say, our whole lives were about how to be the best circles ever, and we had all this pressure about how to be the right kind of circles and we were so stressed out about circles and then suddenly we were on the island and the circles didn't matter anymore, we had to be triangles instead. But we'd never fucking seen a triangle in our lives, and so it was like growing up all over again, with a whole different set of rules."

"Yeah," Felicity says, encouraging. "Okay, I see it."

"But it wasn't horrible," Sara says, quickly, like she's confessing a secret. She doesn't look up from her hands, clenched around her mug. "I actually...I liked it. I liked being there. Not all the time, but...by the end, we were used to it, and…" she looks over at Oliver, and there are tears in her eyes. She thought this would hurt him, he realizes, with a sick twist of his stomach. 

"I know," he says, reaching out for her hand. "Me too."

Her shoulders slump. "Oh."

"It's what made it so hard, being back," Oliver says, feeling a sudden tremor in Sara's hand, watching her body shiver and feeling it from that one point of connection, between their palms. "Because I missed it. I really did. But I wasn't supposed to, and...I didn't miss _everything,_ just certain parts. I wanted to go back, but I also wanted to be home. Nothing felt right. I couldn't pick one or the other, and everyone expected us to be so grateful, but I wasn't, really, I was just…"

"Pissed off," Sara finishes, on a long exhale. "Pissed off and fucked up."

"Yeah," Oliver says, in relief. There's a strange feeling in his chest, like a sphere is expanding inside of his esophagus, squeezing his organs together and making it hard to breathe. But he _can_ breathe, and he feels good, like he's washed himself clean of something. Accomplished, almost, like he feels when he's cheered Thea up about something, or finished one of Raisa's chores before she could catch him and tell him to stop. 

Felicity leans into Sara's other side, fitting her head in the nook between Sara's chin and shoulder. She and Oliver lock eyes, and for a long moment, the three of them are caught in a perfect, harmonious circuit. He thinks he can maybe feel Felicity's cheek, through his connection with Sara's hand. Like he can see what they see and feel what they feel, just by being close enough, in tune enough. In love enough. 

"Thanks for telling me," Felicity says, after a second. Sara huffs softly. "We really need to talk, but - I love you both. I've loved you both since the moment I met you. I just wanted to say that."

"We love you too," Sara says. She looks over at Oliver with her whiskey smile back on her face, that lift to her eyebrows that she's been giving him since they were kids: _come on Ollie, I've got a really great idea. You're gonna love it._ "I told you, Oliver. Didn't I?" 

_How could we be anything without you?_ "Yeah," Oliver says, his heart, his head, his hands, all full. "You did."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe it's finally done!! it feels strange. this story's been with me for a couple years now, and has carried me through three cross-country moves and friendship-breakups and other related heartbreaks. i didn't always have the energy to work on it but when i did, it was never a chore, and i want to thank everyone who's still with me, and who have left me lovely heartfelt comments that sometimes made me tear up a little as i read them late at night, lying in bed and worrying about the state of my life and other related things. 
> 
> most of all though i want to thank camille (lookatallthemoresigive / urlbending) who is the reason i have skype open constantly on my laptop, and has been a dear friend and sounding board for me the last...idk how long it's been. when did i get into arrow?? fuck this show, tbh!! but i'd do it all over again to meet you, and the other friends i made (vern, fey, rosie, ana, erin, ambreen, jen, omg i could keep going on forever you guys know who you are!!) bc it was totally definitely worth it. 
> 
> i'm such a sap!! thank you for reading!! good luck and goodnight, arrow fandom.
> 
> (p.s. nobody ever guessed my batman reference. guys, dr. meridian is dr. chase meridian from batman forever. i thought it was so easy!!)


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